Hello Chris,
Thanks for another attempt to seek a solution. I applaude your efforts.
Best wishes.
Mike
This isn’t quite right, Hans:
- The original DM Association did not understand prominence and listed thousands of incorrect summits. In 2008 the then MT requested that the incorrect summits be removed. So many summits had to be removed that the AM believed that the DM Association could not continue and requested permission to use P100. The MT granted this.
- In 2009 I realised that we needed a parameter to define whether an Association could use P100, and proposed the use of summit density. After some research the SD was set at 2000 in 2011.
- Since then all new P100 Associations have been subjected to that test.
- P100 Association not fulfilling the criterion have been or will be given a date by which they must identify their sub-P150 summits.
- Invalid P-100 Associations will be given a date after which only P150 summits will be valid. This date will typically be several months to a year after the date in 4), there will be no change to scores amassed before this date.
As you can see, the MT have tried to be as fair as possible in this, no scores will suffer, there will be fewer summits but - and this is the important part - these summits will have been selected in the same way as the summits in all the other P150 Associations in the world.
Brian
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-This isn’t quite right, Hans:
-1) The original DM Association did not understand prominence and listed thousands of incorrect summits.
Dear Brian,
like your statement before about the winter-bonus in Germany this statement is incorrect and puts the German ARM from the beginning days in a wrong (bad) light. Without their work and promotion SOTA would not have grown so fast.
Years ago DXCC and IOTA had to deal with democratic structures and are now being conducted internationally and so SOTA will be someday.
In 2008 we discussed about P50, P100, P150 and the appropriate of “prominence” anyhow. Most of the German operators decided that the prominence is definetely the wrong way to determine summits because of the orgogeny in this country.
In another tread G4… complained about a “19 mph”-sign on an english road. I realy understand him because it´s nonsense. In DL we just have the same feeling about the P150 decision.
I hope the last word is not spoken and MT will find a good solution for everybody within the unwritten rules of ham-spirit.
Vy73 Fritz HB9CSA, DL4FDM RM SOTA DM
Well, Brian,
Except that I skipped the pre-2009 part of the history, it is basically the same. What I questioned was the retroactive effect which you have applied (and lawmakers in general dislike), and wondered if a pragmatic solution could be possible. And that could have been to say that what has been accepted (of course given at least 100 meter prominence) remains accepted and valid summits, and every new summit has to have a prominence of at least 150 meters.
This is the sort of thing which P100 creates:
The “summit” of PA-004 Torenberg (Apeldoorn) - 107m, 1 point, which Nick and I took advantage off yesterday in the rain:
We operated 25m to the left of the picture in the woodland. The Netherlands, and Belgium to a lesser extent are a special case, hence the P100 rule rightly applies.
I enjoy operating the radio on summits like this, like some people may enjoy WAB etc but it isn’t Summits On The Air is it?
As a chaser and activator of all types of summit currently on the list I fully support the MTs efforts to slightly level the playing field and get a little more conformity to a specific standard by imposing P150 where they feel it is appropriate…
Let’s show some respect for the work they do for the benefit of us the particants!
Some one mentioned hot air - yes, plenty of that on this thread, and lots of hair brained ideas as well in my opinion!
73
Phil G4OBK
PS WAB = A scheme called Worked All Britain. The UK is split into 10 Km grid squares and the idea is you operate or chase each 10 Km square.
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Hi Phil,
sorry you misunderstood the discussion. It is not about the excellent work of the SOTA-MT.
As before mentioned SOTA is world-wide and with this you have to accept different opinions.
Your picture and the words about SOTA PA/PA-004 are fine, but it has nothing to do with the prominence discussion.
SOTA DM/HE-001 for instance is P150, a ten-poimter and the only summit in my region with a winter-bonus and it is a car-park-summit (200 kilometers away from me).
I could should you many more examples where a P100 or even a P50 summit is much more difficult to reach (on foot).
Have a good night and vy73
Fritz HB9CSA, DL4FDM
I could show you many more examples.
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No, Fritz, over 3600 of the original summits were deleted in 2008. Some of them had prominences of just a few metres, some had no prominence at all. Either the concept of prominence was misunderstood (which I prefer to believe) or prominence was ignored
I am intrigued. What do you think is so different about the orogeny in your country - actually you have more than one, the Hartz mountains being much older than the alps - that you think that a system that works in the rest of the world will not work in your country? Before you answer, bear in mind that I have climbed in Germany, Switzerland and Norway as well as the UK and Ireland, so I have seen your mountains. They were beautiful, but not strange.
Brian
Let me ask you this: LA is a P150 Association, why do you think that DM, which despite their protestations is no going to be short of summits, should have a lower prominence value than Norway? Forget this business about retroactive action, we draw a line and start again, as we did in 2008, when we got it wrong.
Brian
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Sorry, Phil, post deleted, it was in the wrong thread.
Brian
Edit: Now moved to the latest 12m thread.
But this is not the thing we are discussing here. PA fulfills the MT’s SD 2000 criterion so PA-004 is absolutely fine for the MT.
We are discussing summits with an absolute height of more than 800 m and a minimum ascent of 1 hour not complying with P150.
Perhaps you should have asked Lutz, the DM/NW regional manager during your meeting how many summits taking real effort to get up will be deleted in DM/NW?
The second aspect: It was your personal choice to activate PA-004. Nobody forced you to do this. You are also free not to chase such summits. I am happy to tell you which of our 37 QSOs you have to delete to clean up your chaser log from P100 summits retrospectively.
P150 does not prevent from such situations. With a prominence area large enough also slight bumps can reach P150. You get a smaller amount of references but still the remaining ones can be meaningless.
The impossibility of making SOTA a level playing field was again proved in this thread. Too many aspects beyond a sensible number of criteria influence what is considered a level playing field. An arbitrary summit density value for P100 will not help improving this. With PA-004 you already have given the best example. Should PA converted to P150 to avoid such a situation? And perhaps ON, too?
Some P150 summits both in G and DM are accessible by road or cableway - quite easy to get up there. Many P100 summits require a decent hike, so what’s your point, Phil?
I appreciate the MT’s effort running SOTA. But perhaps you should remember not only the MT but also the local association managers and their regional managers are voluteers spending their spare time for compiling the summit lists and promoting SOTA in their country.
73 de Michael, DB7MM
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Hi Michael
I did discuss the situation with Lutz DL3SBA when we were on the hill about the reduction in the summits list for DM/NW.
I needed PA-004 for a SOTA Complete, ticking it off the list, that was all. It was there, it was convenient, so we did it,exciting the interest of a passing Government Security Officer in a hi-viz jacket and later a Policeman, but that is another story… . If PA-004 hadn’t have been there we would have gone to an alternative summit if there were any within range with the time we had available, or I would have rearranged our programme to take in whatever was possible earlier in the week instead.
For me in England I now have to travel over 200 Kms to find unique summits which is why I go outside my home country as often as I can, that now means Wales, Scotland, Ireland or on to the continental shelf.
Yes, we will still have small bumps with easy access if the P150 criteria is more rigidly applied, such as the one referred to by Fritz, DM/HE-001 (I must go there soon - thanks info Fritz!), but we will have a lot less than we have with P100 in countries with mature woodland growing strong at 1000m ASL…
My understanding is that retrospectively what has been earned will remain so the QSOs I have had and made myself as an activator from summits in DM etc with you and others will remain as part of my total…
Time still then, to return to the continent when money and time allows before Feb 2016 and get some more easy summits activated before they dissapear from the programme. Sadly I cannot visit when Ham Radio Friedrichshafen takes place this year due to other committments, going off topic I know, but what an excellent programme is being put together by the HB Association.
Brian - noted about the 12m challenge thread - I had not noticed that a seperate thread had been created. Thank you for moving my posting.
I’m shutting up now as I have much work to do getting things straight here after 5 days activating. Logs to submit, photos, GPX tracks, my blog etc, all the usual stuff you have to do when you get back from a tour. I’ll lurk again as I have been doing on previous days and monitor what is said.
All the best
Phil G4OBK
Micheal, can I ask you try try a thought-experiment?
Imagine there is no SOTA association in Germany. If someone was to create a German association it would be P150 and there would be 350 summits (or how ever many there will be) and that would be the end of it. The summits which will be deleted from DM would never get added if it was to start now.
I don’t know how many times I have to say the original association was very wrong to include so many summits with no prominence and that it was wrong of the MT to accept it. But accepting that situation of a completely invalid association is the root cause of the all problems now. With hindsight we would have been better to have rejected the P100 plan and have done without a German association simply so we could have introduced a compliant association at some point in the future. It would have saved a lot of heartache and argument. The cost would have been I, for one, would not have
met so many excellent German activators and chasers over the years.
There is nothing, repeat nothing special about German summits that warrant special accommodation. The rules good enough for the rest of the world are good enough for Germany.
I certainly do remember them and have already said so. I also accept that you are in a difficult position in that no matter what you do there will be people who blame you for things you have no control over. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
The level of abuse the MT have received from fellow amateurs stirred up by a few UK stations beggars belief. Personally I would simply cut the access to small bunch of stirrers who only strive to destroy when they can’t get their way. But unlike some, we have policies we follow. We don’t block people because we don’t like their view point, only when they are abusive or cheat. Having said that, I have been tempted to switch off the database, cluster and spotting engines and see how everyone gets one with enjoying SOTA when the infrastructure is removed.
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Andy, actually I don’t agree with the idea that anyone in the program must have any kind of privileges but, do you think really that this … statement… would solve anything?
I can imagine which would be the normal consequence of that. And I think you can too. And I do not like it at all.
73, Mikel
I’ll add a bit more. We’re looking at the bigger picture here. We are looking after the international future of SOTA.
In the early days, the then SOTA MT did not have access to the mapping analysis tools and skills that it has now. Furthermore, as a very young SOTA was first trying to expand internationally, it would have been politically difficult from the then MT to have been less accepting, especially without the means to check and verify.
Since then, we have developed the skills and IT tools to analyse topography much better, and have some real experts in this field both on the MT and in association teams around the world. With this, we have developed (over a long period) a completely objective and consistent set of conditions for when an association may be considered for P100 (for instance ON and PA). Also, for the circumstances when an association may apply for a subsection of it to be P100 (for instance F and parts of Texas).
These conditions are consistent and apply the world over. Since we developed them, all new associations have adhered to them and produced sterling work alongside the MT in preparation of the data and documents. Furthermore, all these associations have cooperated superbly in ensuring that we don’t have duplicate references for border summits - another long time “legacy” issue for SOTA.
These consistent, objective and stringent conditions have been fully observed and worked with as SOTA has grown across North American and into Australia and Russia in recent years. All with virtually no problems.
If we are to continue to grow and develop SOTA internationally, it is only right and correct now that we bring the small number of existing European associations into line with these international standards. Yes, we know, expect and accept that there will be resistance and unhappiness at the loss of summits. But please look at the bigger picture - SOTA can move forward, and finally, after many years, have every association in-line with the universal standards.
No points will be lost. All previously gained activator and chaser points will be totally protected. Nobody loses out. Some countries/associations will have had a number of years of SOTA activity with a lesser prominence requirement than their area allows. See that as a bonus, and the logs and points for that period will never be taken away.
As a further bonus, there will be many months yet to still activate the summits that are to be delisted. A long notice period will be allowed as we recognise the wish of some activators to still have the opportunity to visit some of these summits.
As a further further bonus, several of these older European associations have rather generous points bandings with high percentages of 8 and 10 point summits, and/or 2/4/6 points bands coming in at low altitudes. Compare the points bands in the EI association to the GM association for instance. Some of these scoring bands would simply not be permitted with the better processes and formulas we now apply to new associations - but we will not be interfering with the existing scoring bands of associations.
We are at the point in the international growth of SOTA where continuing to do nothing is no longer an option. A stronger, more consistent and objective SOTA is what will emerge from this.
Agree, Tom, but could they be known? - as they might be of the interest of every participant, IMO…-
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Fritz, PA/PA-004 should be part of the prominence discussion as the highest point in the Northern part of the Netherlands is 110 meters. PA-005 is less than 100 meters above the “saddle” and when you study the terrain profile between PA-004 and PA-005 you will see that these two can’t be separate summits.
Therefor PA-004 and PA-005 should be deleted and replaced by one new 110 meter high summit that just meets the P100 requirement.
73, Hans HB9/PB2T
I have not argued that DM should remain a P100 association; I only suggested a pragmatic way forward.
Hans
It comes down to fair play, Hans. If we are pragmatic and allow DM to continue using P100 summits, then in fairness we should allow all the P150 Associations to use P100. That means something like ninety Associations having to re-analyse their topography, identify their P100 summits and the critical cols, and re-write their ARMs. If we assume that there are as many P100 summits as there P150 (just for the sake of the discussion) then it means that world-wide something like 66,000 new summits will have to be documented. It seems to me that it would be easier in terms of time and energy expenditure to get DM to move in step with the rest of the world than it would be to make the rest of the world get into step with DM.
It has been suggested that the P100 summits be retained but score a nominal one point instead of the present score of up to ten points, but the same applies, moving the rest of the world in line with DM in the name of fairness - but here there is a further point, as not only do the new summits have to be established and the ARMs re-written, but I suspect that the database program would have to be re-written, too. Another point, there are several new Associations about to come on line - how will their teams feel at the news that instead of going on line they have got to do the whole job again?
I appreciate your concern to defuse the current tensions with a pragmatic approach, but the MT have to weigh the consequences of every proposed solution and see what new problems it would produce.
Brian
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One last comment: This wasn’t exactly what I meant. What is going to happened is that DM is going from a P100 association to a P150 association, and the question is if its non-P150 summits still shall remain valid. If so, I cannot see all the consequences you see simply because these summits fulfilled the requirements at the time they were approved. Concerning other P150 associations: These are P150 association, and they have never at any time had the opportunity to have non-P150 summits approved. Thus, I cannot find it unfair not to open up for non-P150 summits for these associations.
Hans
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