Its not that simple. You not only have to get yourself elected, you have to be in with the right group to make any difference. Back in the early 70’s I spent three years on the Council of the BAA. There was a group of members of the Council, centred around a media personality, that had a little dinner club, IIRC they called themselves the Polaris group. They had a meal and discussion before each council meeting and at the meeting voted monolithically. If they didn’t want something to happen, it didn’t happen. I suspect that many National Societies work something like that, certainly I believe that the RSGB is run the same way although the details may differ. In fact I believe that the RSGB is worse in that they have partially abandoned the democratic process.
Maybe, but wasn’t it required for a QSL card to be valid for IOTA, that the island name was printed on it? Few stations on the island of Great Britain seem to put the name of their island on their cards.
It’s pretty obvious which is the bigger and better programme.
SOTA beats IOTA by exactly one dit
(Let’s not discuss Humps OTA to confuse things further)
I don’t think you can compare the two schemes. They have similiarities and differences. I’ve packed the 817, Lipo, travel 5m pole and a simple antenna for some lightweight SOTA whilst on a family holiday. I was able to put AF-004 on from the beach using the SOTA gear but it’s hardly DXpedition level activation.
To me, the more sensible idea would be to piggy-back SOTA onto other expeditions/activities. This is what has happened in VK9 a few times. There has been an expedition for a contest etc. going oput to Lord Howe Island and sticking an 817 and a few SOTA items doesn’t add much more to carry. You can then get a SOTA activation for just the sweat of climbing the summit along with the bigger expedition. Easier to justify the cost.
For Europeans, we have a large range of islands that double as holiday resorts and many are really nice places even in the European Winter (27C today in Lanzarote but in the UK 80mph winds and torrential rain is predicted). We have 9H4, TK, EA8, EA6, CT3, CU and SV9 as established SOTA desitinations with some tasty looking 9A islands. All of these are easy to get to and cheap. Our JA friends have summits on nice IOTA islands and we do have VK9, ZL7/8/9, E51 for those down under. Only our US friends are not too well served yet with only KH6 and KP4.
So roll the two together and have a symbiotic relationship.
Hi Jonathon,
I could have given definitions but thought it clear enough.
If I had known how to do it without importing a text image I would have used subscripts.
Yes I have been known to be surly and sometimes mean. Also a PITA and worse, but not so often for the last 50 years.
My apologies for offending your keen sense of correctness.
Perhaps the RSGB concluded that IOTA is more popular than SOTA based on percentage of hams knowing about it.
Being a newcomer into the SOTA world, I have the feel that IOTA has been running longer than SOTA and I have the feel that a bigger percentage of the hams in the world know about IOTA rather than SOTA.
I have the feel that SOTA isn’t currently known at the same extent as IOTA within the ham radio community and possibly not only around the whole world by also inside the UK.
I’ve been licensed since 1984 and I have almost always known about IOTA, having even chased and activated islands in the past. However, being a pretty active radioamateur over the years since I got licensed, I only learnt about SOTA just a couple of years ago.
SOTA is getting known by more and more hams and even non hams around the world, but there’s a long way to go until it equals IOTA in terms of popularity understood in terms of people knowing about it.
Just my 2 cents.
Best 73 de Guru
I’m surprised that this thread has gone on this long! IOTA and SOTA are not in competition with each other, both programs offer fun activities for hams, some may prefer IOTA and others will prefer SOTA. Guru is right, too, IOTA has been around for a lot longer. I think it was fifty years last year that it has been in existence, so there is little doubt that more hams will have heard of it, but as Tom says, it is difficult to compare the two, it is better to follow Andy’s approach and have a symbiotic relationship. Perhaps we should suggest to the IOTA people that the next edition of their directory should include information on convenient SOTA summits on island groups, and our database should refer to IOTA designations where appropriate.
FWIW this is what the RSGB said on the IOTA website:
" “The RSGB Islands on the Air (IOTA) programme celebrated its 50th anniversary as a premier DX programme in July 2014. The last fifty years have seen the programme grow to 2,500 active island chasers and approximately 15,000 more casual participants. It is perhaps second in scale and scope to the DXCC award; indeed, many would argue it is even more challenging than that programme.”
Note the reference to “a premier DX programme”, I am not sure that we could call SOTA a DX program, we welcome DX with open arms but are equally happy to accept local contacts. This in my opinion reinforces the view that the two programs cannot be compared and should not be seen to compete.
Very fussy on notation at the moment with all this state space analysis stuff running around in my head…
If you put big S in that beauty all hell breaks loose! It is good fun but an activation would be more so. Anything over 2 points is overdue. I wish the weather would play ball, it would do me good
OK Jonathan,
FB
Having a mathematical model is great for understanding the interactions and the critical parameters. But none of this sort of analysis predicts that an emitter follower can oscillate. Modelling sometimes makes assumptions that seem reasonable at the time but…
And as for whether SOTA or IOTA are best well …
Life’s too serious to be short, or something like that
I am glad you have met it. I am certainly not convinced that mathematics is worth its time in more complex problems such as what you describe. Which will have tricky parasitic elements to model which in turn makes the ultimate question of stability a difficult question to answer. Its possibly always easier to build real models.
In-fact I am convinced this stuff has more used in mechanics then anything else…
However some of it has relevance in filter design.
The Adjoint matrix is worse still, and you need that to calculate (sI-A)^-1 as well as the determinant.
Absolutely agree. Its FUN that matters. Paper QSLs or any kind of award is just tosh as far as I’m concerned. So it worries me not a jot if I’m activating a hill I activated a week ago. If that activation keeps someone esle happy then that is a bonus.
… Its been a long day.
You haven’t offended me Ron.
