Hello Alan .
No problem , i had just set up my coaxal dipole and turned radio on and heard vikki ,so i qsy to the freq and 3 s2s and a short while later i found james M0JCQ . so 4 s2s on my second activation. The activation from Long Knoll near warminster was a bit more challenging was there for a hour and a half , but we got enough contacts in the end .
73 Matt 2E0FGX
Hi Viki , im sure you was on GW/SW-003 as recall you comenting we was both on 003 . Sorry what is the complete all about ? No i have not stumbled upon that page yet .
I will be mainly operating on 2m , yes i can do hf but my hf operating is done portable near the car or a short walk , a yaesu 891 is a lovley rig but a bit weighty 
Enjoy future activations , i shall be out next weekend hopefully .
73 Matt 2E0FGX
Hi Matt.
Just to put your mind at rest, Viki was on GW/SW-003 when you had the s2s with her. She has made a typing error as she was on GW/SW-010 very much later in the afternoon.
73 Allan
Hi Alan ,
just as i thought .
73 Matt , 2E0FGX
Hi Matt. Sorry about the tryping error but I am glad your eagle eyes noted it. A ‘complete’ is when you have both activated and chased a particular summit and you will find a table listing activators and their numbers of completes in the database. The chase does not have to be from another summit but a few people only submit chases from a summit (ie s2s) - including me as I only operate from summits and not from the QTH (unless I hear a desperate activator locally…) hence I still have a lot of my activated summits still to chase - especially in the Lake District as I am not within VHF range very often. I am glad to see your s2s points are piling up!
73 Viki M6BWA
Thanks Viki , and great thanks for explaining that to me . My home QTH is swindon so working my way out on those 1 point ones first and after a few more weekends of gathering 1 points per summit i think im going to venture down to exmoor, un decided yet if going down to cornwall to claim a few 1 point activations is worth it but i could make a long weekend of it .
Guess you just use a VHF handie ?
73 Matt 2E0FGX
Hi Matt,
Congratulations on passing your intermediate and welcome to SOTA. I’m Located on the west coast of Wales just outside Aberporth about 7 miles north of Cardigan. I am a Chaser only for various reasons the main one being shift work and limited time. I have been working all weekend so have only just seen your post hence the late reply. My SOTA region is Mid Wales and i’m not to far from Allan GW4VPX who always pops up on a summit somewhere. A great bunch of people worldwide on here matt which i’m sure you have found out already. Not forgetting a few keen SWL as well who also chase. I look forward to working you on HF/VHF soon.
73’ Don GW0PLP.
Hi Don
Great stuff and yes tje people are very nice . I will be operating in wales within a month i imagine , im going to do a couple in Gloucestershire and then somerset area before venturing over to wales, although i do fancy having a go at exmoor and dartmoor but a long trip from swindon for a day
73 , matt 2E0FGX
Hi Matt. I use a Yaesu VX-7R handy which covers 70cm, 2m and 6m (although I’ve not yet attempted 6m seriously.) It is compact and light and the batteries are tiny so I normally carry at least 2 spares. The radio is supposed to be waterproof and it (and I) have got pretty soggy on occasions! I have a 30cm Nagoya helical stick aerial which is replaced by a Sotabeam (or homemade) dual band dipole (no longer in production I believe) and lots of bits of overflow water pipe to raise it as high as possible. Amongst other spares I carry pipe joints and my record is splitting 2 of them on a slightly breezy activation of Whitbarrow (G/LD-056) when I was crawling over the the ground to avoid being blown off - and that is only a 1-pointer! The picture shows that the radio is slightly smaller than the ski glove I was wearing on a rather cool recent activation of Pendle Hill(G/SP-005)!
73 Viki M6BWA
Hi Viki ,
Thanks for that , bit of a mindfield knowing which handset to go for . I use a anytone AT-778uv which is a very compact mobile radio it does work well but has it moments with the filtering . I was using a 5/8 coaxal dipole antenna on a 6m sota pole .
Do you ever use HF ?
.73 , Matt 2E0FGX
Hi Matt
I only use M0JLA’s HF in desperation - ie on last year’s Outer Hebrides trip and will have it as a back up for South West Northern Ireland trip this coming May. My aim is to qualify (or at very least) activate the hill on VHF (and UHF if I can) but if I think it is very unlikely I will be successful then I will ask for between 1 and 4 contacts on HF before going onto VHF. However getting HF contacts on 40 m (I can’t use his favourite 60m) is currently a bit problematic so this can also be a bit tricky - especially as I am not used to HF and I find hearing the call signs rather difficult. If I try on VHF and then.can’t get my 4 it may be too late to go to HF as the chasers have gone away or the pole has been taken down! I didn’t qualify all the Hebridean summits (but we had a lot of fun)!!
The real snag of the VX-7 is that it is very open to interference (barn doors have been mentioned…) from pagers on masts etc. Cyrn y Brain (GW/NW-043) is impossible on the VX-7 even only on the stick aerial without a filter (helical filter built by Rod) whilst Black Hill (G/SP-002) didn’t work on the dipole but was OK just on the stick. The problem is that the chasers can hear you but you can’t hear their replies - which gets a bit frustrating for both sides. Long Mountain Beacon Ring (GW/MW-026) outside Welshpool is another one with a mast on top of you but on Brown Clee Hill (G/WB-002) I can hide sufficiently deep in the ramparts to avoid using the filter but I usually operate there mainly on 70cm as their are lots of chasers around. As you can see, you have many happy years ahead of you testing out the possibilities! Have fun!
73 Viki M6BWA
Viki , i can operate on hf but my 891 even a mobile radio is still pretty dence and i have madd a EFHW and a 49:1 transformer so i can get 40 and 20 with no tuner , but if you tried to call sota how was last weekend was so busy with contests there was not a clear freq to operate even 80 was packed when looked at home . 1i could use 17m but i not heard much on there only due to being closed . I would get the memory pad for my radio for calling cq on hf .
I was thinking to by a vx- 6 , i use my anytone AT-778uv and that can be the same with pagers , a band pass filter be ideal but a bit heavy and large .
73 Matt 2E0FGX
As a multi-band, multi featured handheld they’re fine but for SOTA use, they’re junk.
A helical filter need not be large or heavy. I wrote in SOTA News Dec 2011 -
An Anti-pager Filter for 2m Handys by Rod M0JLA
After several unsuccessful activations and some research on the SOTA blog I decided to make a filter. (There is a lot more to tell but sticking to the actual process will be more useful to others who come to the same conclusion.) This article is aimed more at hill-walkers picking up a radio for SOTA than Advanced Amateurs putting on new boots and waterproofs. The main aim here is to list the mistakes I made and suggest ways of avoiding them. With support and guidance from Colin, G8JSM, I have completed construction and some alignment and testing. Field use will have to wait for the next activation suffering from pager blight and I will report on the results later on.
Design was easy using the Helical program [1]. Specify centre frequency, width and impedances; assign values for the analysis graph and a couple of clicks give you a sketch with dimensions and a selection of performance charts. I tinkered with the filter impedance (the only freely alterable variable) and trial and error led me to the final design:- 2MHz bandwidth centred on 145.5MHz with four loose coils of stiff wire tapped for 50ohm feed in a four compartment box.
Mistake ONE. Wire is a bit too thin at 1.25mm; the coils vibrate rather freely. Use the thickest wire the spec permits (a range is offered) and redesign if much less than 2mm.
I worked out the size of pieces required allowing for 2mm thickness and made the box from DS copper clad board which I tried to cut with a slitting saw. It jammed repeatedly and I ended up using a hacksaw. The pieces were filed to size and good fit. If you are good with sheet metal I think a tinplate box would be better.
Mistake TWO. Don’t even think of making this using lead-free solder unless you are equipped with the right sort of iron (I am not convinced that there is such an item!) and you know exactly what you are doing. The joints on mine are a disgrace and I was getting nowhere fast in a half-completed box until a contact suggested old style solder. I bought a reel of 60/40 non-corrosive flux cored solder. What a difference!
It might be worth mentioning a mistake or two that I didn’t make. The lid needs attaching with screws, so nuts need soldering inside the box (3.5mm seem OK). Don’t be so neat and tidy that the lid will fit either way around; offset at least one nut (and the corresponding screw hole). Colin suggested adding tuning screws and I soldered nuts to the outside of the lid at the compartment centres and then drilled right through the nuts tapping size to allow me to drill the lid from the inside to clear the screws.
All being completed I was ready to test and align. Previous mistakes are minor blips compared with what went wrong next. I don’t have a sweep generator; nor do I have an oscilloscope that does much above 100MHz. At the time my signal generator was broken so I decided to tune using VSWR which the Helical program shows very clearly as a mirror of the passband. Using a 2m FM transceiver through a VSWR meter into the filter and terminating with a dummy load looked like a suitable arrangement. WARNING! This could damage your radio; Colin advises a 3dB attenuator in line here to protect the PA stage. VSWR was not very responsive; no dip. I broadened the tuning range, discovering in the process that the radio had been wide-banded, and found the dip at 164MHz.
Stop and think very hard if this happens. Don’t automatically assume that your filter is totally wrong. Check, of course, that you haven’t made a silly mistake and when you find that the filter is as specified think what else might be wrong.
Mistake THREE. There were three other items involved here but I chose to concentrate on the filter, stretching and twisting the coils beyond repair. Then I made a new set more tightly wound; similar result after an epic battle getting them into the box (it’s easy when the box only has one side; once the other two are soldered on there isn’t much room). Then I did it again with the originally specified diameter but more turns; little difference. At this point I gave up. (What was actually wrong? See below.)
I mentioned this fact on the blog in passing while commenting on someone else’s problems with being heard and not hearing the reply. Richard, G3CWI, immediately came back offering to align it for me if I sent it to him and Colin also came back with more help. By then Viki, M6BWA, had experienced another difficult activation (Wentwood) so I decided to have another go. I first followed Colin’s advice and trimmed the over-long coils to the correct number of turns plus an extra half turn. Then I stretched the coils out to the correct design length.
This time I set the radio to 145.5FM and locked the dial. With all the adjusting screws removed I followed his advice again and extended an Allen key through the screw hole over the first coil. A dip was observed, causing some excitement! Unfortunately the adjusting screw was too short and so was the longest in stock, but not by much so I used it, getting a weak dip. Then I turned the filter end-for-end (which is why you need the lid fitting one way around only so the adjusting screws don’t get switched if you take the lid off) and repeated the process; bigger dip! The same again for the middle two coils and then a phenomenon I will come back to was observed. Clearly the screws being too short stopped further progress so I locked together two nuts on the end of the ineffective screws and tried again. This proved very successful and tuning was completed.
Or was it? I think that there was still a residual effect from the original problem. Certainly the local repeater,GB3ZA, suffered a seriously reduced signal (it did open this time) though nothing like as reduced as the local pager on 153.03 which was down at least 40dB on the S-meter.
Mistake FOUR. My dummy load may be OK at HF. It never occurred to me to test it but I now know that it has a resonance in the upper end of the VHF band, hence the original dip at 164MHz was actually the minimum VSWR of the dummy load. I think this effect skewed the readings even at 145.5MHz.
By this time my new (to me) and quite elaborate signal generator had arrived so I tried a different technique. My 2m analyser acts as a very sensitive tunable signal strength meter so I set the sig gen to a few microvolts at 145.500, tuned in the analyser and adjusted to fsd. Putting the filter in circuit caused a drop of several dB but a bit of careful screw turning gave me a fairly decent peak. The limited tuning range of the 2m analyser limits any attempt at producing a performance chart, so I went back to the radio for final testing. A quick retune at 145.500MHz and then tests over the range, showing 64dB down at 141MHz and 151MHz. GB3ZA opens and returns S9+60 and GB3VM returns S5 but I am told that it is not fully quiet with 10W as it used to be. With luck the filter might even reduce breakthrough when I am on 2m ssb and Viki is on 2m FM.
The peak is not tidy at all (see chart on Flickr), which brings me back to “A phenomenon I will come back to”. Three of the four coils tune fairly smoothly; the fourth behaves very oddly by comparison, with much faster meter movement and a hint of a double peak. This was easily noticeable using the VSWR method; less easy when relying on a bar graph S-meter.
Clearly, there remains some unfinished business apart, of course, from the field test. This is scheduled for the Clywdian Hills on 13th, 14th and 15th December. I think we are expecting difficulty on Cyrn-y-Brain
Rod, M0JLA with many thanks to G8JSM and G3CWI for their support.
[1] Helical program download from www.tonnesoftware.com
[2] Pictures of Colin’s (G8JSM) filter http://www.flickr.com/photos/g8jsm
[3] Pictures of my filter www.flickr.com/photos/m0jla
73
Rod M0JLA
PS the field test was conclusive on CyB.
The links appear to be out of use - sorry.
What would you recomend ?
Matt 2E0FGX
Cheers Rod and what a write up . I will check the links out later once at home in front of a pc. A small portable filter for sota wpuod be ectreamly usefull .
73 ,matt 2E0FGX
Most of those bar the FT-70 are low spec single band devices but they work well for SOTA. You may want something that has more “shiny” features. You may accept that some features plus some problems is better than a lower spec device. I’ve had a big sell-off of gear I bought because it was sexy but then I never use so I am down to 3 handhelds now. I have a “brick outhouse” VX-170 just for SOTA, a VX1r for use at rallies etc., a DJ-G7 for 23cm/70cm FM (2m performance is dire).
If you want have a bash at 2m operation then I don’t think you can go far wrong with an original FT-290 and a small PA that lets you run 1W, 10W and 30W. Mk1 290s will be 30+years old now but you still see immaculate ones on offer. Avoid eBay, the prices suggested are silly money. A tatty one but working should be about £50 max. £100 should buy a mint, boxed item.
There is no right answer… others may disagree. 
Great , thanks .
I was thinking along right lines . I only have a 2m coaxal dipole so was thinking a mono band handset but i thought when using just genral handy to have the 70cms on local repeters . I was looking at thr microset linears i think there called , may give a extra bit if need to .
I will keep my eyes out but in meantime i will see whst new mono band handsets are about .
73 Matt 2E0FGX
Hello Matt,
If you hadn’t already noticed there is a G/LD SOTA weekend planned for this year. Most alerts are for Saturday 18th May. You don’t necessarily have to be in the Lake District to take part and if you have no plans that day maybe you could activate a summit closer to where you live and try get some S2S (Summit to Summit) contacts.
73 Chris M0RSF
Hi Chris ,
many thanks i will try and get somewhere is wales most likey for that one and i will keep an eye out looking at times etc .
73 Matt 2E0FGX
