Am incorrect in saying that this is primarily repeater technology and in common with other award schemes, terrestrial repeater contacts are not valid, hence the lack of spots?
Perhaps primarily used in that way but they are perfectly capable of simplex operation too 
Dave
(M6RUG)
Merryton Low has far superior take-off to the East, and slightly inferior take-off in the other directions. Over the years, my contest results, overall, have been better from Merryton Low than from The Cloud. The problem with contesting from Merryton Low is that I donât enjoy it as much because it isnât SOTA. So I choose to take part from a SOTA summit despite knowing full well Iâll not do as well.
Hi Dave,
Digital Voice mode FreeDV was tried on a SOTA summit in VK a few weeks ago - not sure how it worked out though.
FreeDV is free and uses the open source CODEC2 and can be used with existing transceivers of all makes. Itâs also only 1.5KHz wide and so well suited to HF use, while it can also operate on 2m SSB or FM (or AM for that matter!).
Up until recently youâd need to take a laptop along to run FreeDV from a Summit, but there is now the SM1000 speaker microphone that has all the encoding and decoding built into it, but thatâs an extra investment of course and unless someone was really determined to use Digital Voice, I suspect there are not many people who have the SM1000 and climb SOTA hills.
73 Ed.
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Well I suppose so. But thatâs where I live and where I do most of my activating. If I was activating in West Wales or Scotland I would do HF - or have HF with me at least as a back-up, as indeed you do.
Seems to me we have a âchicken and eggâ dilemma here. Is the purported decline of 2m SSB SOTA due to the lack of chasers or the lack of activations? Myself, I do not know, because my SOTA log shows the 2m SSB activity levels going up and up year-on-year.
I know that people will argue with that saying âThatâs because you primarily do VHF contests which are gaining in popularityâ. Fair enough. But thatâs only a reciprocal argument to saying that Gerald (for instance) is spiralling outwards to more and more remote summits as time goes on. The only way to analyse in a mathematically and statistically secure manner would be to compare his activation logs for Bardon Hill G/CE-004 year-on-year over a number of yearsâŚ
âŚwhich is not possible (with well understood reason!)
It seems your concept of take-off is at odds with mine. Bosley Cloud with a long steep drop to the East is in my opinion better than Merryton Low which has a fairly flat terrain the East.
I wonder how many activators try vertical SSB and spot the fact so chasers with colinears may venture to listen.
That would be a good idea 
The only place I can put a Yagi up would mean I could only get G/SP. I love chasing SOTA but not at any cost!
Dave
(M6RUG)
Indeed, Iâve used a colinear for ssb contacts, with a reasonable amount of successâŚThis activation springs to mind. There are a few others buried somewhere in the database.
73 Mike
2E0YYY
I have yet to be convinced that digital voice modes offer any measurable advantage for simplex communication compared to analogue voice (SSB or FM) on the VHF/UHF amateur bands. In general, digital voice modes are designed for repeater use ⌠which I have always regarded as a crutch for the inept.
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
Thereâs an elephant in the room here and everybody is pussy footing around. Shall I go first?
Before the removal of the CW test needed to get an HF license, approx. 50% of UK amateurs were limited to VHF. We can postulate why so many people, 25000 or so, found VHF fascinating and rewarding when they needed a CW test to get on HF.
Now they donât need a CW test and 12 years later, VHF is no longer fascinating and rewarding. Go figure, as they say in the US.
That was then. Weâve 12years of people coming in to the hobby who never were limited to VHF. If you can have HF with a bit of wire in the garden and can âwork the worldâ why on earth would you stick up poles, rotators and 14ele beam so you can maybe work 350km on a day to day basis from the average location?
Want people to use VHF more than they do now then give people a reason to go on VHF such as the activity contests.
Want people to use VHF like they did in the 80âs and 90âs? Make them sit a CW test for HF access. (And this is never going to happen and I wouldnât advocate or support such a move).
3 Likes
Yes. They sound 'orrible!
Yes, the linking and routing options are interesting. As is building, installing and keeping networks running. Any fool can play with a VHF radio. Put a radio with <1MHz spacing between input and output and install it in close proximity to 15+ other medium power transmitters on a commercial site and make yours work and not affect the others. Keep it running 24/7 etc. Well that is a different story and one that sorts the men from the boys.
However, the cash spent on a DMR handset for example, buys a metric shed-load of minutes on your phone. Iâve used repeaters in the past for coordinating amateur activity. Now I just call/text someone. Sounds better too!
All true Andy. But the situation is far from grim - thatâs what Iâm trying to point out anyway. Back around Christmas time, there was a similar theme going round about 2m FM being dead / not what it used to be etc. So I went out to my local summit and came back a few hours later with 100 QSOs in the logbook, all 2m FM using mainly 1 watt or 2.5 watts from the 817 into a vertical (SOTAbeams MFD). Not in any contest or other activity period either. I think some people just enjoy moaning
No-one has grumbled about 2m FM since I did that. I may, as a result of this thread, go and pull the same stunt on 2m SSB sometime soon.
Well thatâs part of my current MO Steve. Start on 2m SSB horizontal, change polarisation to vertical and continue on SSB and then change mode to FM. Time was when I didnât have to change polarisation as my log was suitably filled with contacts made using the beam horizontal and the remaining time on a summit would be taken up running HF.Incidentally, I have often considered mounting the beam at 45 degrees and accepting the loss, but I have not go around to adding the necessary fixings. Maybe a few more metal rods to make a proper crossed yagi and a phasing harness is the way to go.
I must say that I am a reluctant FM user on account of the fact that by the nature of its everyday use, it is a more relaxed âwaffleâ mode than SSB. I often get caught by someone in a warm shack keen to describe something in detail totally unaware that I need to move on as time is limited and often weather conditions are making things difficult. Maybe this doesnât happen in IO83 where SOTA activity on 2m FM is reasonably high, but out on the âperipheryâ it can be an issue.
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Ha ha, I empathise entirely Gerald! When I did the aforementioned 100 QSOs on 2m FM, I was mildly frustrated with the QSO rate of about 25 per hour. I found out about what people had been watching on the television that morning, the current weather in a multitude of towns and villages, the latest news about the garden, what was in the oven for tea and a good many life stories. None of which went into my logbook
Thatâs another big plus for combining VHF SOTAing with a scheduled contest!
I have no doubt that digital is not good for us, ham radio operators.
Analogue works better under weak signal conditions.
With analogue radios under low signals, we, ham radio operators, can fully lower the squelch and our human ear+brain be able to extract and understand a voice message out from the noise.
I doubt that a digital system can do it.
Iâve never tried a DMR or similar digital HH but Iâm 51 years old now and I remember very well when I had my first analogue mobile phone back in 1996-97 and I was able to sometimes pass successfully the message through with some fading and QRM under weak signal conditions.
In these days, with the digital mobile phones, the signal can be 1 or 0. As long as itâs 1 everything goes well, but it can easily change to 0 if the signal weakens and then the communication gets cut.
Digitals only want a 59 signal report. They are not able to process a 44 or 33 signal, while we certainly can, as itâs well proved on many of our everyday SOTA QSOs.
Best 73 de Guru
from IO83 no doubt⌠You canât get away from the fact that the square does have a certain âje ne sais quoiâ.
I agree that the only way to analyse the reducing 2m SSB QSO figures in a mathematically and statistically secure manner would be to compare activation logs for a given hill on a year-on-year basis over a number of years. However, I still know from experience of over 10 years of SOTA operation on 2m SSB, that out of contest time it is now a significantly harder task to make a reasonable number of contacts on the mode than it was even just a few years ago.
OK, hereâs the Radio Mobile Online coverage map for beaming SE (the optimum VHF contest direction in terms of activity) from The Cloud:
Hereâs the equivalent map, set for all the same parameters, from Merryton Low:
I think these images bear out my point - and match my experience of operating from each site on 2m SSB.
The stations that do the best (by a significant margin) in the 2m contest sessions tend to be in IO92, not IO83. If/when I do my 2m SSB experiment, I will be predominantly beaming south and south-east, as opposed to up into the centre of IO83, for this very reason.
Nobody has grumbled because grumbling wonât cure anything.
Pulling the same stunt from the same reflection wonât advance things, either - it stands to reason that if that location is unusually fortunate on FM then the magic may add a bit of glitter to SSB, too.
For a real challenge, drive down the M6/M5 and activate G/SC-003 on FM. Beacon Batch is a nice hill with a decent path up it and a nice bush to bungee the pole to, get 100 FM contacts there and Iâll give you best!
Brian
So it appears we have:
SIGN
â2m is brokenâ
âNo itâs not, I always make lots of contactsâ
âThatâs because you activate in contests on SSBâ
âBut I am also successful on FMâ
"Thatâs because you are in IO83"
âBut all available contest data and coverage maps point to IO82 / IO92 being optimumâ
âNothing will change my mind until you go to a summit of my personal selection hundreds of miles away and have success from thereâ
DAL SEGNO
âŚagain and again as thereâs no Coda.