Hi Alls,
Unless I am mistaken, today there are only about 110 DXCC countries that have SOTAs references.
But a number of them will probably only be activated as those of 3Y Bouvet, E5 Cook Islands, JX Jan Mayen, KH0 Mariana Isl., KH2 Guam, PYT Trindade, VKH Heard Isl., VKM Macquarie, XF4 Revilla Gigedo, ZL8 Kermadec, ZL9 Sub Antartic, ZS8 Marion, without going into the details of the references to South Georgia, South Sanswich, Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island and others…which are anecdotal !
Is it not time to encourage new national associations or enthusiastic radio amateurs to join the “movement”, China, Peru, Morocco, India… otherwise what good is a DXCC badge?
Best regards,
Chris F4WBN
My good friend @LB4MI Helge who was with me to activate Ottofjellet on Svalbard(JW) a week ago,- was on JX for 6 months in 2022.
He got a good old-fashioned reprimand (kidding ) from me for not activating summits with his callsign JX/LB4MI when he was there in 2022. Now I’m just crossing my fingers🤞that he will go back there at some point!
Regular enquiries are received by the MT for new Associations - the stumbling point is the availability of accurate mapping and/or a willing volunteer to be Association Manager. Where accurate mapping is available (and does not cost a King’s Ransom) the process starts to establish a new Association.
I’m currently re-analysing ZL SOTA summits based on 1m x 1m LiDAR data - the current ‘gold standard’ for elevation data.
Once I finish I’ll publish the error stats for ZL between that and the global 30mx30m space shuttle survey of elevation data for identifying ZL SOTA summits. That should give some real data for the argument, one way or the other, as to whether using the available global 30mx30m data to survey new DXCC is viable.
The encouragement is there, the problems are firstly the availability of suitable mapping, and secondly that many countries that would be attractive as SOTA Associations have a sparce population of hams, none of which are willing to take on the months of work involved in bringing a new Association on line. There is much that the MT can do remotely, but in the end we need someone on the ground who can prepare a manual, advise on local legalities, and help with things like finding names that are omitted from the maps. I believe that currently there are several new Associations being prepared, and a number more that have stalled from lack of maps or lack of local enthusiasm. It is,after all, a lot of work!
) from me for not activating summits with his callsign