5. Ας γνωριστούμε

Thank you for your email of October 19th notifying us of your retirement form the role as AM of SOTA Greece in favour of Dr Antony Chazapis SV9OAN who will take over at your recommendation.

I apologise for not replying sooner to you, however you will know that the two weeks surrounding the end of the month is a particularly heavy period of work for the MT in chasing, checking and uploading new and updating associations with deadlines to meet.

Firstly may I thank you on behalf of the whole management team of SOTA, for all your assistance in the functioning of the SOTA Greece association. We are indebted to you for 14 years of voluntary work in the SOTA association.

We also take this opportunity to welcome Antony to SOTA organisation and the role as Associations Manager for Greece. We look forward to working with you to promote this already busy association.

As Panos is already aware, this association is queuing to take a full update which involves re-checking the qualification of summits to the SOTA criteria. In fourteen years or so the methods of measuring summit elevation and position and its related col has improved immensely and the most recent SRTM satellite data combined with a number of different analysis software packages enable us to verify that summits do qualify for the international award to much greater accuracy nowadays.

Updating is usually preferred annually, but we have changed our methods of verification too so that it is not reliant on the local AM to offer submissions of data from available local sources.

The SOTA summit team will run the analysis and provide a Landserf (or other list) of summits that meet the award criteria and therefore acceptable to be included. It is only necessary for the AM to check by position and ensure the local summit name is inserted in the list for each region.

We have updated quite a few associations since July 2015 and whilst some have lost current summits (as not qualifying) they have also benefitted by locating new summits not previously included. So there has been pluses and minuses in order to make the award consistent and fair to all SOTA participants worldwide.

We can explain the new process more fully as soon as Antony is ready and we can direct MT summit team resources to the job. It is fairly painless nowadays with less work for the AM to do although with an increased workload for the MT which has meant that we have expanded the management team on a truly worldwide basis to manage the workload, and we still need more team members to satisfy the growth in demand for SOTA.

We welcome your vision to promote local amateur radio as a hobby in Greece and wider afield as it aligns with our objectives too.

Best regards Panos from all the MT team here.
Enjoy your future with our best wishes.

Feel free to guide Antony into the role please, although we can explain the changes particularly with updating the Greece Association.

Best 73
Rob Harwood G0HRT
Associations Manager

Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2016 17:32
To: john at g3wgv.com; Robert Harwood; Read Tom; Αντώνης SW1OAN; Adamos SV2KGA; ΑΪΒΑΖΙΔΗΣ SV2BZM; Georgios Charisiadis; ΚΩΣΤΑΣ SV2LLB; Vassilis Chantzis-SV9KNN; sw1jco at yahoo.com
Subject: SV1COX - Greece new Association Manager

Dear friends,

I am very grateful for the amazing journey of the last 14 years.

SOTA is a great conception which linked my two favorite hobbies and redetermined the way that I did amateur radio. My colleagues that gave it a try had similar experiences and that is the reason of its great success.

I think fourteen years is too much (we initiated our dialogue with John in December 2002) - I was 35 and now I am 50 y.o. . In these years together with the Region Managers and other friends we managed to achieve a rhythm of an activation of about 24 hours in a country with a very short amateur radio history and very few radio amateurs (with minimum presence on portable operation). Also about 50 hams return to the program annually.

I feel that it is enough for me and for a few years I have overcome the point that I can give to the Greek SOTA the boost it needs to continue to grow in its former pace.

For five years I have struggled to find my replacement. I wanted someone to be young in age, educated, to have computer skills, proficiency in the English language, to deal with homebrewing, to have earned the respect of the local amateur radio community.

And mainly to have a vision for the future of our hobby in Greece and the appetite to chase that vision with persistence and dedication.

Please accept Dr. Antony Chazapis (SV9OAN) as the new Association Manager of SOTA in Greece and allow me to prepare him to start the proper negotiations with you for the renewal of Greek ARM.

Antony has been already accepted for that role from the core of Activators and Chasers in Greece.

I attached to this mail a small CV for your information.

Sincerely yours,

Panos Bogris, SV1COX