Hi all!
It was funny and disappointing to read all these posts above.
It’s just funny when people, living far from affected countries, knowing nothing about us, are trying to explain what should we do and what shouldn’t and accuse us of cheating and even stealing. (Of course no one said explicitly so, but try to read between the lines.)
And it is really disappointing to see and learn a frustrated and arrogant MT when it tries to handle it’s own mistakes, punishing others for them.
In general, I have no problem with having unified rules, but cannot accept the way they were implemented. Moreover unified rules do not exist at all in our case. SOTA is based on a feature of terrain, but the terrain is different in each part of the world. So whatever rules will be created by the MT, they will be advantageous for certain people and disadvantageous for other. So, automatically appears the classic roman question: "Qui prodest?"
Loosing few hundred summits and few tens of supporters might be not relevant from overall SOTA perspective but it certainly relevant for associations affected, so don’t be surprised when we protest and express disagreement.
SOTA HA was created 10 years ago as a P100 association, and became the most popular award program in Hungary. If we had have P150 rules ten year ago, SOTA would remain an average, hardly known program, or wouldn’t been created at all.
So, I wonder, what were the changes on circumstances, founding the necessity of such drastic changes of rules after ten years of existence. Of course no one will answer the truth, because we are radio amateurs, living according to ham spirit, we are free of human weakness.
In fact the only reason of the changes and recent (and past, and future) debates (including my present post) is the green human envy and nothing else.
A quotation from SOTA database homepage: "SOTA is not inherently a competitive activity, it’s about individual aspirations and working towards a goal at your own pace. However, it can be fun to see how your progress compares with that of others, hence we publish our Honour Roll on the internet."
This is either an unbelievable naivety or the biggest lie. Publishing a “non-competitive honor roll” accessible for anybody, making possible the comparison between results, automatically triggers the competition. Of course, we are different, some of us do not take this kind of competition seriously, (they are on the middle or on second part of the list), but guys on front of the list certainly do. You might be surprised, but in real word the competition always accompanied whit frustration, dissatisfaction and envy of less successful competitors especially if the conditions aren’t equal. Checking the forepart of “non-competitive honor roll” shows, that some associations tend to be first (just because they are older/bigger/better/nicer…) are underrepresented, while others are overrepresented just because the existing rules are more favorable for them. That’s all. Everyone can make a conclusion…
So whatever explanation the MT gives, whatever new rules it implements, there always will be winners and losers. It seems, we are on the wrong side now. SOTA has been the most popular award program in Hungary and my favorite activity. I’m afraid it used to be…
73!
Janos
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