I don’t know the far SE of England at all, having visited only a couple of times (Midhurst and Lewes based). I am planning a visit for SOTA purposes and am totally confused by SE-014 and SE-015. It looks to me as if Cliffe Hill is on Lewes Golf course and Cheriton Hill outside Folkestone. However, both SOTA mappings seem to have them interchanged, so I don’t now know which is which.
Could someone who knows please check and pass on the required corrections to the relevant person (Andy, Jon, Jimmy??).
Thank you for pointing this out to me. This is my mistake, I accidently wrote the longitude/latitude for G/SE-014 in the G/SE-015 row and I wrote the longitude/latitude for G/SE-015 in the G/SE-014 row. I have now corrected this and this will be uploaded onto the SOTA Database and SOTA website shortly.
I any of you see anymore of these, please can you let me know so I as can correct these mistakes as soon as possible.
You seem to be right, the Google Map conflicts with OS Get-a-map and Openstreetmap on the summit pages. I wonder how that happened, and more to the point, how long has it been like that? Have 75 activations been wrong since the start of SOTA?
73
Brian G8ADD
PS Seen Jimmy’s reply, so perhaps no activations are affected.
Thank you for clarifying this and for sorting it out. I am pretty sure none of the other SE summits are affected, but have not quite completed my researches; I will certainly let you know if I find another problem.
I think this is still wrong. For SE-015 Cheriton Hill the Google map link shows a hill just outside the town of Lewes (presumably SE-014) but the OS grid reference is for a hill outside Folkestone.
As database updates often get overwritten when backups are restored I thought it was worth mentioning again.
Thanks for the SOTA QSO on Sunday; hope you had a good day in the sunshine.
Are you sure the map is right? Or that space-time hasn’t got a lot more curvy recently?
It’s on the TBD list along with many other bits and bobs. Such as 12MC honour roll, SWL support, S2S time filters, restoring accounts for people who asked for them to be deleted 15months ago etc. etc. However, I’m having some “me time” with some personal projects for the next few weeks.
Yes, I know but I was hoping that you had straightened out the space-time warp and all would be back to normal.
The maps certainly don’t seem to be right as Cheriton Hill does not seem to exist and I don’t think I ever found Claife on the right bit of the map either.
Personal projects need to take priority at least some of the time, so enjoy them; I hope they go well.
Sorry we did not speak during our recent expedition to GM but conditions did not seem very good much of the time.
The maps are on SOTAwatch, not the Database. If the coordinates on the Database are correct, then the maps on SOTAwatch will become correct in due course when Jon GM4ZFZ is available to trigger an update.
I actually meant that the maps themselves were not correct, not the SOTA markers which are misplaced on the SOTA mapping and also on Adventure Radio which I normally prefer. After another look at the OS maps I have actually found Claife labelled but there appears to be no label at all on Cheriton. This added to my confusion but I think I am sorted out now.
The pending data update for SE-014/SE-015 is done. Sometime in the next 24hrs, the SOTA mapping project will snarf up the latest summitlist and update the map positions. SOTAwatch will follow (there are pending updates for HB9, G, SP, W4K).
However, all that is hooey because the more important news is that the sat modem project has uplinked a SOTA spot message. The antenna is pointing out of the shack window and only sees a small patch of sky so I had to wait till the RSSI display was showing enough link margin, I hit the send command waited till the OK message was displayed, refreshed my email and there was the message. It went Scotland>Satellite(several)>Arizona>(internet)Southampton>California>Scotland all in the blink of an eye. I do like technology
The pending data update for SE-014/SE-015 is done. Sometime in the
next 24hrs, the SOTA mapping project will snarf up the latest
summitlist and update the map positions. SOTAwatch will follow (there
are pending updates for HB9, G, SP, W4K).
Thanks, Andy; Cliffe and Cheriton now seen to be back where they belong.
Is the sat modem for self spotting from remote Scottish summits?
Is the sat modem for self spotting from remote Scottish summits?
Anywhere on Earth! It’s to fill in the gaps when there’s no mobile coverage, you haven’t got a spot/alert and you are not doing CW (where RBN scratches the spotting itch most wonderfully). Great for SSB self-spots.
I’m waiting on some more stuff from China to complete the unit. There’s a Raspberry Pi as a standalone Wifi AP which offers the UI over any web browser. Power it on, connect your phone to the AP via WiFi, use the browser on the phone to control the messages to send. All the hardware is off the shelf stuff, so it’s just a bit of wiring (USB cable and power lead) and some software to plumb it all together. The availablity of a Raspberry Pi as a complete target makes the software trivial. All the “heavy lifting” exists as standard Linux software (Boa - web server, Hostapd - Wifi AP, UDHCPD - dhcp server). The software is merely some Python CGI and scripts to get all the bits talking.
Enter the spot info on web page, press send, wait for sat acquisition and uplink and the mobile end is done. Takes about 20sec max for acquisition and uplink from cold. The result is an email arriving in about another 3 secs and that gets injected into the normal SMS_NA spot server. That’s already written and working. Simple really.
The availablity of a Raspberry Pi as a complete target makes the
software trivial. All the “heavy lifting” exists as standard Linux
software (Boa - web server, Hostapd - Wifi AP, UDHCPD - dhcp server).
The software is merely some Python CGI and scripts to get all the bits
talking.
Are you planning on making the software and hardware design available so that other people can use them?
Are you planning on making the software and hardware design available so that other people can use them?
That’s the idea. That’s why everything is bought off the shelf and uses FOSS software where possible. The only closed item is the sat modem which is about £200 plus air time charges. That’s driven a bit like a Hayes modem with a sequence of AT commands. The sat uplink is Iridium SBD, the same thing used for tracking valuable containers on lorries (whisky lorries, cigarrettes etc.)
It also leverages (ooh, marketing buzzword) the existing SMS spotting infrastructue I have in place as that’s all tried and tested. This is just a different way of getting the message into the system.
Having been on both of them I can assure you Cliffe Hill is on the golf course but beware, the golfers are USELESS! Take a hard hat! The public footpath is in the AZ but I doubt if you’ll be safe there either.
Cheriton is a sore point. I found my way over there, got to the summit and found my antenna broken, nil points
