SOTA Maps not updating?

I activated a summit on December 09 and SOTA Maps has not updated to show my activation.

Anyone else having similar issues?

Mike
N1IDN

I’ve noticed it takes a really long time for sotamaps to update, but I don’t think it too that long for the summits I’ve done.
Hopefully this is just a temporary thing and the MT will release the new one soon.

Hi Mike,

Which Summit ???

Is you activation showing in the database under find summit?? Is it updated in the Summits information page ??? Those are the places to look first - if they don’t show you as the latest activator SOTAMaps shouldn’t either as the data comes from the database.

UPDATE:

I searched your logs and found we are talking about a first activation (well done) of W7A/CO-112 and the database, the Simmit Info page AND SOTAMaps are showing you - see below:

image

I have had some issues accessing the SOTAMaps host server over the last two days, perhaps you also had that and this is part of that access problem, (your ISP may have given you a cached page?) rather than the data?

In any case all looks fine at the moment.

Ed.

I have been treated to access to the new version of SOTAMaps and it has some great additional features - I’m sure several people will find them VERY useful, so. I also hope we will see the new version of SOTAMaps in production soon.

Mike, apologies for this: I’ve manually run the update script about an hour ago to pull the latest data from SOTA, so your activation does now appear as Ed has rightly pointed out. Thanks Ed!

So, the reason for the recent activations data not having appeared for a couple of weeks is simply because the update script is failing to update. When I run it manually, it works. So, something changed on the server a couple of months (?) ago - I’m not exactly sure what that was - which effectively disabled the automatic updating of the sotamaps database.

Now, I’m currently hard at work on not only the new version of sotamaps - which, as Ed has hinted - is due to go live shortly, but also now working on a new version of the new version, which attempts to remove the dependence on the proprietary (and potentially very costly) Google Maps API, and replace it with a free and open-source alternative. Since sotamaps is, always was, and always will be, primarily a mapping site, the inclusion (or not) of personal achievements indicators (of whatever kind) has always been a secondary concern. So, with my time being spent on new, and even newer, versions of sotamaps, maintenance and upkeep of the current version has very much taken a back seat.

FYI, the current site gets its’ data from a CSV file from SOTA, which is upated every day. This file is analyzed to pick out details of summits, regions and associations, and to update the small sotamaps’ database. Each line of the CSV file contains basic data about each SOTA summit, and each of those lines contains a couple of fields giving callsign and date of the latest activation of the summit. When a particular summit is activated again, those two fields are updated with the new callsign and date of activation. That is the total extent of the current site’s “knowledge” of activations.

In contrast to that, the new site has access to a regularly-updated copy of the entire SOTA database itself - this means that details of ALL activations and chases, from the foundation of SOTA in 2002 to the present day, are therefore available to the new version of sotamaps. This then makes possible:

  • inclusion of more activations data in existing pages, and
  • the creation of new pages which deal exclusively with the mapping, and presentation of data in charts and tables, of activations and chases.

Watch this space…

Cheers and Happy Hols,
Rob

2 Likes

Thanks for doing the extra work. I really didn’t expect that, but much appreciated.

Mike
N1IDN

1 Like