Spotting invalid summits

Dear specialist

There have been several changes on the online resources, so I ask (probably again?) this question: why is it obviously possible still nowadays to spot retired or invalid summits, e.g. this summit, seen today?

Sat 11:34 DA0CW/P on DM/BM-151 7.031 cw
*[VK port-a-log] (Posted by …)

On the other hand, when you click on the summit code to read the history of this invalid summit, you are redirected to the entry page for associations and summits and don’t see anything helpful. But there is still this summits page in the former design showing all details even for the retired summits.

Believing it and entering it outdoors on a summit, e.g. in VK port-a-log, doesn’t fail, but the questions start at home when you cannot transfer the output file to the database.

Thanks in advance,
and vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ

Retired summits were once valid summits, so the scores that participants got from them when they were valid were allowed to remain in the record. That being so the details of the summits remained on record so that people who have queries about these old recorded activations and chases will be able to satisfy their curiosity.

Activations of invalid summits might be due to an oversight, not checking before activating, but of course many of these invalid summits remain valid for GMA, HuMPs etc., and those activating for other schemes might be using our facilities to increase the number of chasers calling them. This may be seen as undesirable since the chases made in good faith will be invalid, but re-writing the software to deal with this by making invalid summits unspottable is not a trivial task.

Brian, I’m surprised to a larger extent, that SOTAwatch should consider a possible use of the entered data for other programs. It’s on the other side even the SOTA database itself rejecting my input for such an invalid summit some weeks ago, hi. That is not really satisfying although I can cope with it.

Additionally, I don’t think that validating an entry against a main master data table should be a larger issue, unless there are other existing problems.

Thus, I’m happy so far that mostly > 100% of the operators spread correct summit references!

Vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ

There’s an interface to SOTAWatch called Spotlite that doesn’t do summit checking. It’s used by a number of tools and will be replaced sometime soon by API calls

I hope you are going to give ALL of us that write tools the information to re-code to using API in plenty of time to make the change over !

No, I prefer to keep everyone in the dark and just wait for the complaints to roll in - helps find the obscure tools :wink:

(Of course we will - talk with Jon @G4ZFZ for details)

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Thanks for the additional comments, they help a simple user to understand it better. I can see that the “SOTA machine” is like a big grown tree with its history, and it’s sometimes difficult to take care of older trees appropriately and for those looking at such a garden to understand the invisible, hi.

Enjoy your Sundays and vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ