For all CW activators. This weekend is The World Wide CQ Work all prefix contest. Please consider using alternate bands. If using 80,40,20,15 and possibly 10, you will probably have to set up higher than usual to find a clear frequency to call CQ. 40 meters during the day shouldn’t be too bad, but good luck trying 14.061 or any of the usual qrp freqs. Good luck activators and chasers. 73 de Scotty
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Thank you for the reminder about the WPX Contest Scotty. On Sunday, weather permitting, I hope to be operating from Northern France. I’ll use 10119 KHz or thereabouts on CW and on 40m SSB get as high up band as I can, but it will be busy as the CQ WW CW contests tend to take over a large part of the 40m band. There simply isn’t enough room at the bottom end of the band to accommodate the numbers taking part in the contest in Europe.
73 Phil
My contesting times are over. At least for now…
In case WX permits activating, which is not very likely to happen with some rain showers forecasted for Saturday and Sunday, I’d be pleased to use 30m and 20m SSB. I may even try 17m CW.
In case WX doesn’t permits and I find some chance for chasing from home, I hope I’ll be copying several activators on 30m, which is usually a better band for me to work EU than 40m and 20m.
I’ll be looking forward to having lots of QSOs with you all.
73,
Guru
I am curious if it will be possible to operate FT8 on 20 meter band during cw contest.
Storm right now pouring heavy rain, thunders and lightning strikes on Pamplona, so no activating obviously and difficult chasing due to heavy QRN. But 3 chases on 30m have been logged so far and I’ll keep trying, so I look forward to seeing lots of activators on 30m this morning.
GL activators!
Cheers,
Guru
As expected, a great chasing time for me today, mainly on 30m with my set-up in the rental appartment. Endfed wire in balcony and these rigs:
This is the log:
Thanks WPX WW CW contest 
Cheers,
Guru
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Here in Feldbach actually working the contest. Good openings to Japan and the far east, should be a good weekend for SOTA, if you can find space.
de OE6FEG / M0FEU
Matt
Did three activations today. 40 meters was busy but usable for SOTA. I suppose that G5W and 9A1A needed F0 as a new prefix, because they called me. In the morning hours 7005 was a good frequency.
73, Hans F/PB2T
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Tomorrow morning, I intend to operate as E70AA/P from E7/BO-018. The plan is to combine some 15 minutes of SOTA and then half an hour or so of contesting. If you find me during the latter part, the contact will certainly count for SOTA points, but please exchange the contest numbers with me. Thanks a lot.
Hi Matt,
It’s amazing how selective the long-distance propagation is. I have been very active throughout the CW WPX Contest on all bands 80m - 15m. I have made almost 500 QSOs, but I have not heard a single JA or Far Eastern station on any band! I have heard only one very weak VK … too weak to work on CW.
There have been plenty of strong W and VE signals on 40m and 20m, but hardly anything from South America. The only African station heard was CN3A in Morocco.
Remarkable how different the bands can sound in different parts of Europe.
73,
Walt (G3NYY) Central England
Hi all,
today, I found it very difficult to find a clear frequency on 40m, even in the morning. For a QRP station like mine, its seemed impossible to keep control over any frequency. Even the very low end of the band like 7.0018 MHz, was full. And once I had found a spot and started calling CQ, big guns sent their CQ TEST etc.
So as a last resort and contrary to my alerts, I took refuge in the 30m band.
73 de Martin, DK 3IT
That’s very interesting, by the time I left this morning I had worked stations in Hawaii, Ecuador, Argentina, US Virgin Isles, Japan, China and Pakistan, among others; many of them on 15m. However, like you we only heard Morocco from Africa, and no VK or ZL at all. Our antenna was a joke as well; just an end fed wire about 2m AGL. It was great that a few sunspots and some sporadic E came along at just the right time to liven Field Day up. Conditions for the contest were the best I have seen in quite a while. It’s a shame the weather tomorrow is too unstable for SOTA, I haven’t done an activation in a while now. Maybe Wednesday will be better, before I set off to Friedrichshafen on Thursday.
de OE6FEG / M0FEU
Matt
The CQ WPX CW Contest was slightly beneficial for me SOTA wise.
On my early morning activation yesterday of FL/NO-143 I called contest stations 9A1A, ED3O, EC2DX, OK2FD and DA2X to help qualify my activation. Like my early morning session today on FL/NO-059 most of the Shack Sloths were still in bed… Yesterday morning the only true SOTA chasers who were listening with propagation were Uli HB9CGA and OE1WIU/P Wilhelm. There was no propagation to UK. Uli HB9CGA - you must be an early riser as you also helped me qualify FL/NO-059 this morning. Thank you Sir! It took me 50 minutes to make 6 contacts on the 40m band, however the FT8 frequencies were full of signals on 20, 30 and 40m. The popularity of that mode is reducing the activity on CW and SSB without a doubt as the stats on Clublog show up so well.
Operating position on FL/NO-059, comfortable picnic table:
73 Phil
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As I announced in my previous post on this thread, on Saturday morning we (my yl Eldina and me) hiked to the peak E7/BO-018 on the Lovnica mountain. We got to the summit around 10:00 UTC and I started calling cq sota around 10:15 UTC on 14.062 MHz. No answer from either sota chasers or contesters.
After 15 minutes, I started returning calls to some randomly selected contest stations. It was amazing how many of them got my callsign right on the first attempt. I mean, my output was definitely less than 5 Watts, the swr wasn’t good either (2 bars on the FT817’s display), and callsigns with the /P suffix are not what people usually expect in this kind of contests…
Anyway, after some 20 minutes of “contesting”, I moved to 14.090 MHz and started calling cq sota again. To my surprise, the frequency was completely QRM free. Unfortunately, it was also free of sota chasers. After few minutes of cq-ing I got a small pileup, and then silence again.
So, we called it a day, packed our stuff, and headed home.
Many thanks to Manuel (EA2DT), Pascal (PA1BR), Roy (G4SSH), and Jan (OK2PDT), who found me at 14.090 and allowed me to earn my new 8 sota points based on “genuine” sota qso’s.
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