Saturday 13th February 2016 - ie this coming Saturday - is the final day of the SOTA 6m/10m Challenge. I wonder how many of us are going to be out?
I have received a pass-out from The Boss. (I made sure I’d booked us a very nice Valentines night dinner for the Sunday night before asking…). So I’ll be heading to Shropshire to bag myself a decent number of Challenge multipliers, and a nice block of points, courtesy of the Winter Bonus.
It’s the last day of the Challenge, and I have a Pass-Out, so I’ll be going whatever the weather. Fellow licensed family members and fellow licensed residents of Macclesfield are welcome to join me … but I expect I’ll be on my own
Just glancing at the weather forecast, and snow is indicated for the Church Stretton area on Saturday afternoon. So we will see…
I’ll be listening for you. The main rig lost its drive to the PA in mid QSO yesterday so I’ll be QRP unless I first find out what is causing the problem.
I will be out on a summit (or two) Friday - (weather permitting) - Saturday I have other commitments, but should be able to chase for at least part of saturday.
All of the 28MHz activations today - I could hear none - lets hope propagation improves.
Everyday is a challenge in VK6 at the moment. hardly worth turning the radio on. Can’t even hear the eastern States on 10 metres. Combine that with 4 days of over 40C temps’ .
Roll on some cooler weather and better radio conditions.
Yes, thanks to the 10m enthusiasts for climbing the hills this last week. Some activators not submitting their scores to the database just yet… Steve G(M)1INK is having some fruitful activations in Scotland GM/SS this week. Really good to see the VK boys pushing hard also in their evening time. (Won’t mention the 6m band).
Nice work Phil. Hope you can hear me on Saturday. I’m one of those guilty of getting behind with logging my activations. And with work to do in the daytimes Thursday and Friday, and gigs on both of those nights, there’s no hope of getting it done ahead of the final day. So I’ll just have to catch up with it all (again) after the weekend.
Looking forward to Saturday. The Challenge has been a blast, but I’m quite looking forward to ditching the 817 and returning to some ultra-lightweight action with the HB1B, end-fed and minipole.
As many have pointed out the last day of the challenge is near. The database scoring only looks at QSOs on 10m & 6m that took place during the challenge windows. However, you don’t have to enter your QSOs before the challenge finishes, you can add them afterwards.
HOWEVER… there will be a cutoff date by which you must have entered your logs if you want them to count to the awards. Off the top of my head that is likely to be 0000Z 1-Mar-2016. i.e. approx 2 weeks. The MT will take a snapshot at that time and use it for determining places etc. You can still enter logs after that date, they’ll appear in the database pages, but we (the MT) wont be including them.
Yes, thanks to the 10m enthusiasts for climbing the hills Steve G(M)1INK is having some fruitful activations in Scotland GM/SS this week.
Hi Phil, thanks for another contact today from Minch Moor GM/SS-133 (my 4th time I think). Amongst the many Russians, I also logged Iran, Pakistan, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Oman, Kuwait, Dubai & Morocco. All good fun.
Thanks for the contact Phil! Was great to hear and work a number of the regulars on this forum in amongst the rest of the DX callers. Apologies for not being able to put a name to the callsign much of the time, but my usual logging spreadsheet (aka prompter for names) was on the home computer and unavailable on the summit.
Still thinking of potential options to get out and bag a few new ones before 2359Z 13 Feb - might even manage another drive to summit for a possible activation looking for EU 10m S2S around 0800Z to 0900Z tomorrow (i.e. 13 Feb).
Tom, I hope to give you a call later from GW/NW-042 / GW/NW-043. I’m taking the family to the Pass. I’ll climb Moel y Gamelin whilst the others do Cyrn-y-Brain. After lunch I’ll do NW-043. Jamie will just have 2m and 6m (stubby ant). I’ll set up the 10-m GP.
What is the next challenge
some thing a bit more “year round” I hope . My activating chances were not really in line with this last challenge the best band conditions for me were when it was stinking hot and unsafe to go out on summits. At least in the northern hemisphere there was not much chance of bush fire instead the cold and things like snow was probably a problem for some. Not complaining I am sure some made some good contacts on 6m or 10m and jolly fine business .
Regards
Ian vk5cz …
