p100/p150

I think you are right. :smile:

Either way, the meaning should be clear. Personal attacks are strictly forbidden, guys, make a note of it because I will NOT be lenient.

Brian

Hello Victor, I never knew you knew Latin :sunglasses: In utroque sensu shoulderstand constabit. Conuiciis severe prohibitum, indignantes, quod nota quia non parcet.
Mike

Quaedam vero sunt non melius sciri :cold_sweat:

Correct. Or at least, near enough…

Brian

“Quem omnes metuunt, ille omnes metuit…”
“Nulla regula sine exceptione”.

Fence with Latin is nice, but it does not go anywhere, which is a shame.

Anyway, the reason for my involvement was not an effort to find something easier. Reason was to diversify hills, often more difficult to reach - and the opportunity not to be too dependent on motorized movement.

So - “Tantum possumus, quantum scimus”. Things are hard to elucidate through the discussion forums.

Karel

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I think I understand your point, but the prominence alone does not reflect the level of achievement of the activators. And that is a reason why some people find the scheme somewhat “unfair”.

I also understand that some people consider that keeping some summits with a prominence lower than 150 meters gives an advantage to some privileged individuals who want to preserve this situation to get more points easily. Some others write that this is not the point, as they just want to “play SOTA” and take advantage of all the facilities offered to the SOTA “community” by a small group of extremely devoted volunteers without, for example, having to drive too far.

So here is another suggestion. Would it be “true to the original concept” to declare that some summits with less than 150 meters prominence can be accepted, but are worth 0 points for the activator, and something (1 point ?) for the chasers ?

It seems to me that it would conciliate the various points of view that have been expressed here.

What you do think ?

3 Likes

I have recently discovered the intense discussion in this thread. As far as I see (I might be wrong), the background is:

  1. The DM association has been granted a P100 permission for their summit some years ago.
  2. Recently, the MT has somehow defined a “density” measure and a corresponding threshold, and moreover defined a “density criterion” a P100 association must fulfill.
  3. This is in turn applied to “P100-associations”.
  4. P100-associations not fulfilling the criterion must delete their non-P150 summits.
  5. This procedure is given a retroactive effect.

I wonder whether if it is this retroactive effect which causes the arguing.

It is no doubt that SOTA is a P150 award program, and that P100 is the exception. But a question is: Is it OK to apply a retroactive effect to summits which are already accepted? Nevertheless, the summits fulfilled the requirements which was implemented at the day of acceptance?

As far as I can see, there are two further ways for P100 associations not fulfilling the “density criterion”:

  1. Summits (P100) accepted before a given date, will remain valid. All new summits must fulfill the P150 rule.
  2. All non-P150 summits are deleted.

In the latter case our German friends must activate the deleted summits under the GMA-program.

73 LA1EBA / Hans

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It never has Christophe. It provides an objective way of selecting which summits will qualify. The rules for selecting whether a rock in the Pacific is a valid DXCC entity are much more complex and ultimately there will be people saying it’s unfair that this rock is not a DXCC and that rock is a DXCC.

The rules objectively identify which summits are included.

The effort involved to activate them cannot be quantified.

Hello Chris,
Thanks for another attempt to seek a solution. I applaude your efforts.
Best wishes.
Mike

This isn’t quite right, Hans:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Since then all new P100 Associations have been subjected to that test.
  4. P100 Association not fulfilling the criterion have been or will be given a date by which they must identify their sub-P150 summits.
  5. 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.

2 Likes

I moved a post to an existing topic: Re 12 Metre challenge just for MM0FMF

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