Hi Mike
I saw your, a ZL and SY2BIKs spots this morning - couldn’t hear any of you - truly bad conditions on 20m today!
73 Ed.
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Short Report and band conditions on my activation of G/SP-004 Shining Tor. 01/03/2017.
Not a very nice morning for activating. Snow, sleet and rain. I’ve activated Shining Tor over 100 times and I’ve never seen the track in such a dreadful state. It took 50 minutes to walk the one and a quarter miles to the trig point
I self spotted on the 20m band at 0727z received my first call John G4ING at 0730z. John ZL1BYZ was quickly out of the blocks at 0738 for my first bit of DX. Thanks to Dave G4IAR for the ground wave contact. There was a steady run of EU contacts before Warren ZL2AJ, made the trip at 0753z. John, ZL1BYZ popped back, only this time he was an armchair copy. Asiatic Russia made the log before Jacky ZL1WA called in to give me a signal report and claim a unique summit for herself…Many thanks Jacky.
Ernie VK3DET finally broke the VK drought at 0818, not an easy copy but we persevered until signal reports were exchanged for my only VK contact of the day. I know Gerard VK2IO could here ZL working me, but sadly, he couldn’t hear me. Many thanks for trying Gerard!
At 0836z a call came in from Tadashi JA1VRY who was not too far from Tokyo, not easy but once again signal reports were exchanged. This gave me the three DXCC’s I’d hoped to work, albeit the number of contacts being somewhat thin on the ground.
At 0903, Derek G4XEE, made a great ground wave contact from Dorset of all places! I finally pulled the plug at 0920z, the cold was getting the better of me.
It seemed to me, the skip was running quite long this morning, I never made one contact with Germany.
54 contacts logged, all 20m ssb
Thanks to all the callers
73 Mike
2E0YYY
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Good stuff Mike.
It’s inspired me to have a go tomorrow morning, though my 5 watts might struggle to match your QRO.
Certainly worth a try. On 20m I worked 17 JA’s this morning, 17 JA’s and a VK yesterday morning, and 10 JA’s and 2 VK’s on Monday morning. All between 07:30 and 09:30 UTC with 30 watts to a doublet.
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
We are definitely having an amazing window of good propagation compared to what we had been having lately. With no little efforts and on my second trial, I’ve just chased Dan NA6MG activating W6/CT-168 (9292 Km distant from me). It had been a long time since I last chased a W6 activator.
Thank you Dan for your patience and good ears. Well, I called you QRO about 800 watts to make it a bit easier for you…
Cheers,
Guru
Just a few hours later, things were very different. When Caroline and I went up the path was wet underfoot with snowmelt, but easy going.
We had good runs on 2m FM and 60m SSB respectively, but obviously no real DX. No time for any more bands as we needed to press on with our journey.
Martyn M1MAJ
Congratulations on the FB W6/CT-168 chase, Guru. I have never heard an activation from W6.
Alas, no JA’s on 20m this morning. 
However, there were VK’s on 30m around 09:00 to 09:30.
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
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Today looks nothing like as good as yesterday on 30m - compare the start of the two days (see below). Yesterday an indoor mag loop was getting lots of spots into the US in the morning on 30m.
Easily explained Richard. The WX all week has been almost windless with blue skies and frosty mornings. Beautiful weather for climbing the summits and playing SOTA coupled with quite good propagation. Some of us have been stuck in an office during this period and are now, on Thursday, looking forwards to weekend and escape onto the hills. Hence, the propagation turning sour and, no doubt, the WX turning to mince.
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Or you could go with the science! We are experiencing a G1 class geomagnetic storm due to a high speed particle stream from a coronal hole on the sun. This should last another two days.
We call it “the EYP effect” here in Macclesfield.
To watch how the day progresses live click here. Updated every 2 minutes.
Yes, K index was 6 about 8 hours ago, now around 4. Some simply beautiful Aurora Australis photos from Hobart, VK7, overnight. 
Compton
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I can confirm this.
Nasty activation on The Cloud G/SP-015 this morning. Even the path up there was a mudplug; goodness knows what state Gun G/SP-013 was in. Even the concrete steps were buried under 2 inches of mud. Forecast was for the rain to have stopped - however, stop it did not.
The new 10m travel mast from SOTABEAMS went up well and was surprisingly easy to use. The sky however was not in a similarly cooperative mood, and nothing whatsoever could be heard across 20m - except for a ZD7 coming in very loud on SSB. What’s all that about? Sadly, I didn’t have a microphone with me to try and work him.
Towards 0830z, and a few weak signals began to appear on 20m. I was a bit concerned as the skimmers that were spotting were only doing so with reports of 2 or 3 dB SNR. RV9DC was first into the logbook. I then called in response to a weak CQ from a Ukrainian station, who worked me immediately. The only other entry in my logbook was friend Terry G3RKF from up the road in Bramhall. A few weak CQ calls from China could now be heard, but I was getting fed up.
I had taken my 10m/6m trap vertical with me to check out - mainly to see how it configured with the travel mast ahead of the EA8 holiday. Good job I did. I had forgotten it was in a poor state of repair - and indeed had forgotten to repair it!
I packed up and thought things couldn’t get any worse. I shouldn’t have thought that. Halfway down, I slipped on some mud and ended up with a splashdown into a filthy muddy puddle. I was now caked in mud! Local residents were 'phoning BBC Radio Stoke with reports of an earth tremor.
My next job was to work out how to drive myself home without transferring too much mud from my clothes to my car. My bothy bag was far too wet to sit on, and I was reluctant to remove my trousers for fear of being arrested. My jacket was used to sit on and provide a protective layer between my car upholstery and The Creature From The Black Lagoon.
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Hi Martyn,
Just shows what a difference a few hours of melt can make. BTW, I just happened to be in the Radio Club shack just outside Stoke-on-Trent, when I saw a spot for Caroline come up on 2m. Typical innit, there was no 2m rig connected up and so I grabbed my hand held and make the contact.
73 Mike
2E0YYY
I think ZD7 is St Helena Island? Shame you missed that one.
When you say the “New” SOTABeams travel mast, is that just new to you, or a new model from Richard. If it’s the same as the DX-wire one, I have found mine to be pretty useless after only about 5 uses as it slips down into itself without warning, something the cheapo LambdaHalbe 6m one has never done in its 5 years of use. Perhaps I’m just unlucky with my DX-Wire mast?
Ed.
Yeah ZD7 is St Helena. I don’t know how “new” the travel mast product is. It was new to me as you suspect. I won’t be a piece of kit I use regularly. It will be what I dig out when I need to put a mast into a suitcase for checked aeroplane baggage.
Mind you, I have for a while, quite fancied building a quarter-wave GP antenna for 10MHz… 
A J-Pole like antenna as discussed on this reflector a couple of months ago, could be a good choice for 30m as well with that 10m pole. I hope yours doesn’t start collapsing while you are operating - it’s a real pain when that happens.
Ed, have you tried carefully cleaning the surfaces that mate on your pole? Take it fully apart and then wipe the surfaces with a clean damp cloth. The hard bit is you have to clean the inside as well. You can find that there is a small build of pole material which has been shed but sticks to the pole because of static electricity charges. A good clean maybe all you need.
Isn’t a J-pole 3/4 of a wavelength long? i.e. 22.5m on 30m.
that is exactly what I would suggest too
Ed: I have had my old Haverford sourced 7m pole become unreliable and very prone to collapse, and I found that there were enough bits of grit between some of the sections to reduce the friction between them. After pulling it apart and cleaning each section with a wet cloth, then cleaning the inside surfaces with running water, then drying it out, it behaved like a new one.
I think some of the grit got into the bottom end of the pole after a collapse early in its life cracked the base. I later inserted a large wooden plug that would take the strain of any subsequent collapse. A large cork would probably be even better but I don’t buy enough champagne to have spare corks.
So far, my dxwire 10m pole has been reliable, but I am very careful to keep it clean.
Hope this helps…
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Hi Andy,
It apears to be the surface paint or varnish or whatever they use that is coming off. OK total disassembly, clean and re-build may help, thanks for the tip. Strange that the cheaper (albeit shorter) Lambda Halbe has never had this problem.
What I do with 20m on the J-Pole like design is wind the wire around the pole and then any excess (which there will be certainly on 30m - run that off from about 1.5m up the pole, horizontally to any useful support and then the coax-stub piece gets attached. Not perfect but it seems to work. Thinking about it, on 30 metres, that’s going to be too much “excess”. The advantage of course is no need for ground radials.
73 Ed.
P.S. Andrew - my 7m Haverford poles are still giving great service after nearly 7 years of use - shame they are so long and heavy, otherwise they would be going up summits with me.
I also have a DXWire 12.5m pole here at home - almost all of the covering has gone off that within a year of it being outside. Each time I touch it I get white powder on my hands. That mast I tape the joints on however.
OK enough DX-Wire bashing - I’ll dissasmble the travel pole, clean it and see if it lasts another 5 activations without collapsing on me!