I know the ink isn’t dry on reports of VK/ZL <> EU S2S activations, but while Mike and I have your attention and excitement about working Dx some 17,000 km, we think this SOTA event can be held twice each year in the months of October and late March or early April.
The ideal dates are those that align with the daylight savings in both hemispheres. In VK daylight savings commences the first weekend of October and ends the first weekend of April. While in Europe, correct me if I am wrong, daylight savings start on the last weekend of March and ends on the last weekend of October, hence why Mike and I proposed this event two weeks ago, for yesterday.
So there are two ideal windows to hold this event, 2nd or 3rd week of October (as we just did) and the first Saturday in April. The first Sunday in April is too late, VK will have changed back to standard time.
Anyone have any thoughts on holding this event twice each year? Any ideas on alternative dates.
Please keep your reports on VK/ZL <> EU S2S coming, the photos are great!
73, Andrew VK1AD
P.S. Short path 17k, Long path 24k or thereabouts.
Congratulations to you and Mike for the initiative.
Special events should not be held too often as they as then they are no longer special. If they are held long enough apart the participants who are still around can then tell very tall tales about who they worked without challenge.
Dates around the equinoxes are likely to give best propagation.
BTW the distances via the long path into southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece etc are a lot more than 17,000 km you quoted.
Whatever you decide on, someone will not be happy. And as far as I know neither of you have the power to adjust the ionisation. I see one participant apparently despondent over only 50 QSO’s. Not worth getting out of bed for apparently. I had hoped for a few more contacts in my log but clearly I did not try hard enough as my near neighbour Tony VK3CAT worked at least twice as many as I did.
The weather in this part of the world will be more benign in Autumn, otherwise a trip to VK6 might be the answer.
You asked in the other thread something along the lines of “what have I done”, well you tickled the interests of lots of people is what you did. Everyone will have had different reasons for taking part ranging from the “why not” to “never worked VK S2S” and all points in between.
So should you organise another event? Most definitely. How often? My gut feeling (and it’s a very big gut!) is twice a year is about right. I understand the logic for the dates suggested and don’t have a better suggestion. You know how much effort was needed and reflectors, email groups etc. makes it easy to get the message out. As long as the organisers seem keen and they get just a few interested people to announce their participation, then you are on your way to a successful event.
I would expect the next one in say 6months, to be more subscribed as a result of people writing about their activations this time. I expect HF conditions to be worse by then. So that makes a nice challenge to pique my interest. I know the antenna I used yesterday is not a great DX magnet. I use it because it’s light and quick to erect and works well enough to enable me to activate summits on 30-10m (propagation gods willing) and it comes as a back up to a dipole which works well on 60/40m. For the next event, I’ll be active with a different antenna and probably a small PA.
I’ll put my SOTA MT hat on now. The event also shows a very important point in that these events don’t have to run by the SOTA MT. Anyone can have an idea for an event, run with it, publicise it and have success. Your idea perfectly wrapped SOTA activations to add something extra whilst not requiring anything extra to be done by activators/chasers or needing special rules or software support. All they had to do was a SOTA activation and maybe they would also have a S2S with someone the other side of the world.
Hi Andrew,
I thought this HAD been held twice a year over the last couple of years (perhaps not so big as this time but …). So I think two times a year at around the dates you suggest would be good but please, please, please, check there are no major contests on the same days or move this to 17m.
Looking at the major contests, March18/19 (Russian DX) and March 25/26 (CQ WW WPX SSB) won’t be a good choice. But the LZ Open 40m Sprint Contest on April 1st would at least give the chance to work 20m (30m not to mention).
October 21st could be an option as the WAG starts only at 1500 UTC.
Aside from that I think the question has already been answered: Yes, please!
Given the way the propagation varies, is there mileage in extending an event like this to cover several time-windows over a day or weekend so as to favour several different DX paths?
On the flip-side, there might be some activators from NA if there was an NA-EU or an NA-ZL/VK window included. Sure, you probably wouldn’t get many activators trying to cover all the appropriate windows, but you might get more activators trying to cover at least one.
My personal view is that NA-EU, NA-VK/ZL and other possible events should all be kept separate. Some of the reasons have already been aired under this thread, but surely the sheer mass of activators on air for an all-embracing event would create even more problems than the EU-VK/ZL event did in terms of QRM, multiple occupancy of frequencies, etc. We all know the issues that arise when we arrive on a summit to find that the band of choice is full of contest stations! Why create problems for ourselves?
I am definitely keen for another EU-VK/ZL event to happen and would like to find out whether there is interest in a similar event for EU-NA. I will start a thread about this to keep it separate from this discussion.
I figure the best summit-to-summit propagaton windows for EU-NA, NA-VL/VK and EU-ZL/VK probably wouldn’t overlap much. The best EU-ZL/VK seems to happen when NA is in darkness, for a start…
