September 2016 New associations and updates

There is one new association launched for 1st September 2016 and that is Iceland TF. This should prove to be a popular SOTA association for European visitors however be warned, Iceland has short days and cold wintery conditions in winter months. Go prepared. The darkest months are from November to February and ice and snow can be expected on all summits at any time.

There are 908 new summits offered in 7 regions.

Our welcome goes to Egil Ibsen TF3EO our newest SOTA AM and our thanks go to Einar Kjartansson TF3EK (RM) and Thordur Ivarsson for their analysis work in setting-up TF association as well as to Simon in our Summit team.

Minor updates to the ARMs have been made to EA2, R9U and a bigger update for VE7 to reflect the database update last month.
Rob
Associations Manager for SOTA MT

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Great to see Iceland joining SOTA - welcome on board. However, given that Iceland is one of the most active volcanic areas in the North Atlantic with a constantly changing topography how frequently will the heights be rechecked and verified? #justsaying

73 Glyn

Welcome to everyone in TF.

This adds another 908 summits to the database and more reasons for me to visit Iceland for a holiday. I can now travel and see a fascinating country with amazing landscapes, bag some SOTA summits and visit the data centre where some SOTA services are hosted.

And with several associations that have proper active volcanoes, VOTA becomes a bigger possibility.

OT:
Last time I was there, I was told that Iceland is the only country where the telephone directory is sorted by first name.
Jim

Probably as often as necessary but the MT limits Associations to one database updating per annum which will give any new summit time to cool a bit!

Brian

Only two of the 908 summits in Iceland did not exist 60 years ago. TF/VE-003 (Eldfell) and TF/VE-004 (Surtsey) were created in volcanic eruptions between 1963 and 1973. The summit region of Hekla (TF/SL-010) has been changed by eruptions in 1947, 1980, 1991 and 2000.

-Einar

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Is one of the SOTA summits the volcano which caused chaos in airline flights about 10 years ago?
Ed.

I think that might have been TF/SL-004 ( Eyjafjallajökull - Wikipedia ) which caused a bit of trouble to flights in 2010.

Many thanks to Egill Ibsen and the TF team (Einar and Thordur).

I think we’re all interested to see how the HF paths work out, and how hard will it be to get some S2S. And of course it will be very tempting for some flying visits (well, maybe not so much in the winter!)

73, Simon

Great to see TF3DX/P out on an Icelandic summit already!!

Fri 12:04 TF3DX/P( Villi ) TF/SV-040 (1) 14.0327 CW

SSB activation anyone please ??

Ed.

Just barely detectable with me but I heard some regular chasers working him, so I hope Villi got his point Ok.

We have been hiking on the top of Eldfell vulcano last week - bad timing…

Last friday TF3DX activated TF/SV-040 and today (sunday) TF/SV summits 9, 22, 25, 41 and 42 were activated. TF/SV-0041 was activated twice. Most of this was done using 145.500 MHz FM. I think this is a pretty good start.:slight_smile:

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I think it is an excellent start Einar. I noticed that there were maybe 5 signups for the database from TF stations over the last 2 days. For a country with a small population such as Iceland, that is a very good signup rate.