Without looking at any propagation forecasts I appear to have hit a purple patch of Sporadic E ionisation during my 45 minute activation of G/TW-004 Bishop Wilton Wold this morning.
The summit is a drive on and lies 21 miles from my home QTH by car, so I was out and back in time for morning coffee. I chose to operate my station 100m away from my car at spot height 226 grid ref SE 832551 which is my favourite operating location on the Garrowby Hill (local name) plateau.
Transceiver: Yaesu FT-857 running 80 watts from a 5Ah14v LiFePo
Antenna: Wire link dipole for 6m/10m/15m (15m band not used) 5m above ground
QSOs: 18 total (10m=7 QSO 6m=11 QSO)
QRV: 0745z - 0830z
My first CQ SOTA on 10m CW produced Franz OE6WIG at 0745z. I made 7 contacts on 10m, including 4 G Stations (I did hear Victor GI4ONL for about 10 seconds, went back but no QSO - probably aircraft scatter).
I moved up to 6m and found the band full of Italian stations. I worked a few of these randoms before calling CQ myself on CW, attracting several known SOTA Chasers including a few G stations in the Midlands and Yorkshire.
My Log:
I am now top activator in the 6m/10m Challenge, but it won’t be for long as I have no plans for any further activations planned in the short term, so I’ll concentrate on the Chaser side for a while…
Thank to Andy MM0FMF for putting this together - great fun if you hit the progagation right!
That’s why I love 10m. I tuned over the band on the summit at 0715 utc and the band seemed dead. Ten minutes later the first two F-stations were in the log. And so it went on, stations popping up and disappearing shortly after all day long. At the end of the day F, I, G, ZD7, EA, SV, UR, OH, LU, S5 made their way into the 10m log. Also heard UK, C5, PY, 4X, FR, CX but couldn’t break their pile up.
his just posted on Southgate news - good timing for those going out to activate on 6 metres this weekend! There’ll be at least one station on:
GX6ZME/P weekend portable on 50MHz
Telford and District Amateur Radio Society will be active as GX6ZME/P this weekend on 6m as part of the series of portable operations planned for the year. Setting up at 10am, then qrv midday Saturday until 10am BST Sunday this weekend.
We are testing out the club kit ready for 6m trophy and VHF NFD and having some fun on the magic band, because we can!
The location is the village field at Little Wenlock, Telford, Shropshire near to where the club is based. The field is at the back of a good pub The Huntsman. Any visitors, please don’t park in the pub car park, but to the right of the pub there is parking along a short lane.
Have a look on our Facebook site to see the beam we are using!
We will try and keep people informed via
Twitter @g3zme
Facebook Redirecting...
and DX clusters
Well done Phil, what a great start and from what would have been my local SOTA summit if I hadn’t left the UK. My dad used to drive us over Garrowby Hill each time we went to visit Gran and Grandad as a kid! It’s alos my ONLY activated UK summit so far.
Hope to bag a few 10m contacts on Sunday from DL/AL-167 as long the Wx stays as predicted.
One can’t overhear your signal even at S1.
