SOTA Mapping Project

SOTA participant Rob DM1CM has been busy and has produced an online mapping application targeted at fellow SOTA participants. This uses Google Maps and offers a slew of features for users.

The Main optin will display the location of SOTA summits on a map. Icons are coloured to show differing points values. You can select association then region for a display of all the summits in that region. You can select a summit directly from the menu or by clicking on an icon on the map. This gives an info box for that summit showing position, locator, association, region, height, points and activation details. You can click the summit name to see the SOTAwatch info for the summit. Clicking on the last activator’s callsign takes you to their QRZ page. You can also show the area covered by the locator square the summit resides in. A panorama for this location is available if you click the panorama button. This shows a Google StreetView view for a point near the summit.

The Range options allows you to find summits with a selectable distance of town, location, locator or summit. A range circle is displayed centred on the location given. You can then select from the summits displayed to get more info. You can get driving directions from the centre of this zone to the summit selected with selectable routes. The road route is shown on the map.

Finally you can have spots from SOTAwatch displayed on a map. The display shows the last 20 or so spots in a list, you can click on the spot to zoom the map to the summit. Or you can display all spots over a user selectable period.

The app has been getting more stable over the last few days and now it’s time to tell people about it. There may still be the odd bug to fix. There’s a link from the database and will be one from SOTAwatch when Jon gets a moment to add it. If you go to the database, http://www.sotadata.org.uk/ and select the Summits menu you will see the option “SOTA Mapping Project” at the bottom of the list. Click that and you’re off and running.

The map works with all modern browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari) but doesn’t work with IE. IE has always been awkward to work with as it does so many things in a non-standard way. It’s a shame this doesn’t work with IE, but as all the other browsers are free, it wont cost anyone anything to try something different. I’m not sure if it will work with IE 10 when it comes out with Windows 8, due shortly. We can hope. Microsoft has been attempting to get IE to be standards compliant and hopefully they’ll achieve that within our lifetimes! :wink:

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to MM0FMF:

I’ve just had a look - this is a terrific resource, many thanks to Rob for his hard work!

“Microsoft has been attempting to get IE to be standards compliant and hopefully they’ll achieve that within our lifetimes! ;-)”

Optimistic, Andy!

73

Brian G8ADD

In reply to MM0FMF:
Hi Andy and Rob

Congrats on the great application! How do I report a bug (or is it a feature)?
Click on “Range”, “Point of Reference” = Locator, “Locator” = jn47el and hit “Map>>”. Just North of the HB9 border several deleted DM/BW hills are shown. Was that the intention?

73 de Dominik, HB9CZF

In reply to MM0FMF:
Excellent, nice visual reference of the summit location’s.

great job Rob

Alan

In reply to MM0FMF:

Great! i have been missing this.
But the summits isnt updated, all the summits that i activitaed this month, stands as “not yet activated”.

In reply to HB9CZF:

Probably a bug. List them in this thread and they can be worked on.

Andy
MM0FMF

Excellent job Rob. Thanks for your work on this!

73

Richard
G3CWI

In reply to LA5XTA:

I’m not sure what the update frequency will be yet. The data is generated every morning by the database. I don’t know if the map should update daily or weekly or monthly.

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to MM0FMF:

In reply to HB9CZF:
Probably a bug. List them in this thread and they can be worked on.

Range 40km around locator JN47hq shows these summits which are no longer on the list: DM/BW-234 364 459 462 463 plus many more.

Thanks for identifying and solving this bug.

A very nice tool indeed, congrats to the authors!

73, Markus HB9BRJ

In reply to MM0FMF:
Thanks a lot for this great tool !

Martin df3mc

Nice tool, indeed!

It seems to me that when looking for the summits within a range ALL summits are shown which are on the full summits list, i.e. even those which are no longer valid.
E.g. when looking for all summits around Munich, still DL/MF-005/-020/-032 (and others) are shown which expired on 31/12/2008.
However, for planning purposes it would be more convenient if only those summits were shown which are still valid.

73 Andy

In reply to MM0FMF:
A realy nice tool, congrats. Like a kml-File for Google-Earth but up to date every time. Good for holiday in an other (SOTA) country.
73 Peter

In reply to MM0FMF:

Hi Andy,

I’m using IE8 and got nothing.
Sri but I don’t want to change my browser because next time I think we’ll have to change our OS, and so on.

Sri, I forgot to thanks Rob for his work.

73 Alain F6ENO

In reply to F6ENO:

I agree with Alain. It sounds great, but I have no wish to change my browser - IE works just fine for me.

73 de Les, G3VQO

In reply to G3VQO:
Not sure how the idea got started that you have to change browsers. In order to use this project, I just today downloaded Firefox…in the set-up process, they asked me if I wanted to change my default browser and I said no. I still have IE as my default, with Firefox in the background. The mapper works great and I don’t notice that there is another browser in there someplace until the mapper asks for it. You’ll luvit. No? So sue me.
.
Elliott, K6ILM

In reply to G8ADD & MM0FMF:
Given that with Firefox you can have addons Noscript, Ghostery, Adblock Plus, Dictionary in your own language in my case British, NOHR Propfire to give you current propagation on the status bar and FireFTP to give you a free FTP client - just to mention just a few of the many - why would someone prefer to use IE
73 Jim g0cqk

Impressive…
Well done to all concerned and of course, thanks.

Bobby GM7GAX

In reply to MM0FMF:

OK, used Google Chrome to look at the application!

First problem identified - choose Association W1 (for example) then Region CO (or any other NA Region of your choice)and it will show the map for that Region. Obviously selecting “Association” is not filtering “Region”

Excellent presentation though but need to remember to start another browser if I want to use it

Barry GM4TOE

Note: Problem seems to only occur with the single letter USA Associations not W4, W5 & W7 and not any of the others - database problem??

In reply to MM0FMF:
Works perfect with Firefox 13…tks vy much for the tool…
deleted Summits will stay?

73 de Franz ON9CBQ

In reply to ON9CBQ:
Works fine on ipad with safari.
However wonder if connection with database is not always available, e.g. can not find S5-cp006 in region.
But appreciated - 73. Wim