I like these events but in the past they have been held around the (UK) May day holiday weekend. The bank holiday weekend is usually hopeless for me due to XYL’s birthday, my birthday and our wedding anniversary!
I vote for any spring weekend except the last weekend in April / first weekend in May. In 2018 May day actually falls on the 7th though.
It looks to be a reasonable proposal to have the NA<>EU S2S event on the same day. I couldn’t see an explanation for not including the WARC bands, but it is what it is. Presumably antennas are unrestricted, so setting up something with a bit of gain could compensate for the difference between the 30 watts out fairly common in the NA<>EU S2S event and the 5 watts in the QRPTTF.
73, Gerald G4OIG (still smiling from my first S2S with VE)
NA-EU s2s will still be free to use the WARC bands. Just don’t include those qso’s if you submit a log for QRPTTF. “30 watts fairly common” might be true of SSB but it would certainly be a small minority of CW activators in NA-EU s2s. The vast majority of cw activators are using 5-15W.
Many thanks for this Barry. I have updated the header to reflect the actual date agreed. Not sure whether I will make it myself either as I am still awaiting the call for surgery. We can firm up on the Autumn event after this one.
Hi Gerald,
Is there any suggested tiime for the SOTA event? To coincide with what propagation there might be and to avoid a time that means one end or the other has to set off before dawn or after dusk. I can probably manage a 90 minute activation before the battery gets low.
I think it was 13:00 to 17:00 last time, but will need to check how the propagation went. The problem for more western stations is an early start if we choose an earlier time. That should not stop us setting a core period for the event and those that want to come on earlier and / or stay later can do so.
Currently I can run the 857 at around 30w output on a mix of S and P / CQs for 4 hours, if I am careful 5 hours. I would like to increase that to 6 hours. I reckon a LiFePO4 16AH is calling.
I suggest we choose a date when a EU to NA s2s QSO is actually possible due to propagation conditions based on past history. A date to early in the fall or to late in the spring will still result in a fun activation, but will not result in many over-the-pond QSO’s.
On the west coast of the USA the skip favors the lower latitude paths (those over the equator) and not Europe before October and after March.
Regardless of the date chosen I would likely give it a shot…watching TV as a second choice is not an option.
Good luck to everyone activating, it’s going to be tough. I start work at 10am Eastern so I may get on the near to work summit, I just can’t stay long enough for the “peak” time.