Brrrr, that was chilly!
Thanks for organising this. Got my first inter-continental QSO as an activator and also my first inter-continental S2S 
One happy (frozen) activator. Decided to pack up earlier than planned after speaking to Steve on Isle of Palms - the image was too much of a contrast for me 
I enjoyed it enormously
3 Likes
Ever had one of those days?
Had to get 2 new tyres on the car which put me behind schedule by about 1/2 an hour.
Finally got onto G/WB-004 to find that my linked GP antenna was just a spiders web of cables and links (So much for sorting it out when I wound it back up last time) threw it to one side in disgust after about 15 minutes of trying to untangle it all 
Put the link dipole up, plugged everything in, only to be reminded that I really should have fixed the BNC connector to the rig from the last time out
Resorted to trying to untangle the linked GP, finally having some success after about 15 further minutes!
Then the low cloud came in, the temperature rapidly decreasing from a balmy 6c down to 1cā¦ complete with the normal cold wind
No gloves, of course, as I had forgotten to put them in the backpack after a recent holiday.
Still, first summit (and s2s) from NA courtesy of Barry (N1EU on W2/EH-001) Thanks Barry, much appreciated!
Also heard Ian, VE6IXD/P on VE6/HC-033, with an excellent signal, but I just couldnāt get back to him, seemingly like a couple of other EU chasers, maybe next time.
Packed up relatively early due to numb fingers, only to find the bottom of the fishing pole drop off whilst walking down, spilling half of the contents all over the place
All good fun despite all the hitches, thanks to everyone who took the time to call, or return calls, and thanks for arranging it all!
Don
m0hcu
4 Likes
That was good fun. A quick activation in the morning to shake out the gear and, of course, bag an unactivated summit ready for the main event. Hope the WX was ok for all the people up North, 27C here dropping to 24C when I packed. It goes cold quick when the sun sets, 21C at the car 50mins later.
Lots of EU calls of course and plenty of NA stations. I heard Barry N1EU as a big signal but he had a wild pileup so I decided that Iād be the DX and let people chase me. Seemed to work and my ODX was WA7JTM which would have been nice if he was just chasing but it was an S2S to W7A. BONA!
Pics and report to follow.
2 Likes
Hereās what happened with the DD5LP/P activation of DM/BW-064.
Drive was 3 hours not the expected 2.5 but I had set off half an hour earlier in any case.
Drove through heavy rain and spray (particularly bad on the first section of the trip on the Autobahn, some aquaplaning - not fun). After leaving the autobahn for about 2 hours of back roads, I went through more heavy rain and then it cleared, there was even a little sunshine. Great I thought but 5 minutes later I was driving in a SNOW storm! At one point I lost GPS and I pulled into a lay-by. About 7 satellites were being received but were showing red not green in the display. I checked my position and route on a good old paper map and carried on. The GPS came back a few kilometres up the road. Interestingly on the return journey the GPS dropped out along exactly the same stretch of road. There are some military bases nearby, so I wonder what they were running to knock out the GPS? The cunning plan with the weather worked however as when I eventually drew up into the car park, the rain stopped and I had a dry (but 0Ā°C) activation. The 2.5 Km walk up to the summit was an easy one. Over half of in on a tarmacced road, that later I saw a lot of (not farm or forestry) traffic on as peple drove up it onto a convenient field and took their dogs for a walk. The wind howling up the valley sounded like a waterfall at some points as I walked up to the summit.
Having arrived, I set up the FT817, 15/20w amplifier and initially put up the 21MHz J-Pole antenna. Then I tried to spot and guess what - no Internet coverage with either Vodaphone or T-Online. Actually Vodaphone were showing a 3g signal but I couldnāt spot myself and only occasionally got the list of spotted stations into RRT. I tried spotting via SMS also without any luck. Eventually the Internet link worked for a few minutes before failing again - it was like that the whole time.
In any case after several CQ SOTA calls on 21MHz, I heard a very weak āsummit to summit, summit to summitā it turned out to be Kevin, AC2KL on W2/WE-031. With a lot of patience from Kevin we managed an S2S contact and my first contact from this summit. More attempts to spot operation on 18MHz, having switched antennas, got through once on SMS I think. No contacts made on 17m though.
Switching to 20 metres, it was wall to wall NOISE from contest stations - which contest was this, surely not the small Bulgarian one - I never expected that to create so much activity - sure enough it was the LZ-DX contest! I decided to give 20m a miss and went back to 15m again.
I was rewarded with three more contacts on 15 metres - M6YOM (a second Kevein for the day), Victor GI4ONL, Don G0RQL and a VOTA to SOTA contact with Andy EA8/MM0FMF/P on the Canary Islands. That last contact was just as I had decided to pack up feeling very cold despiite full skiing gear (less boots and skis) and Andyās comment about being in 27 degrees of heat, along with some threatening clouds decided for me that 1 hour on this cold summit was enough and I packed up and headed back to the car under an ever darkening sky. As I got the boots off and into the car, the rain started again - call that timing or what? Just a 3 hour drive home in front of me (which I managed in just over 2.5 hours). Two long drives for a short activation but Iām happy with an African S2S plus a North American S2S and acouple of UK chasers.
73 Ed.
3 Likes
Are you looking for sympathy? 
Youād better wrap up when you come home!
Here also, I didnāt bother lingering here and went straight through to 17m having left 15m. 15m was the best band for me.
We had to make quite an effort as the weather turned out to be pretty bad. So we put up our tent - without it we would have been drenched within a couple of minutes. Temperature was about 5 C with strong winds.
Mayrhofberg OE/OO-330
We had brought a linked dipole which Peter OE5AUL had also adapted for 15 m in the morning. Unfortunately, propagation seemed to have been best on 17 m for which we didnāt have any antenna 
No chance to make any contacts with NA on 20 m from our location.
However we managed S2S contacts with 2E0YYY, G8XYJ, GW0WPO, EG2GKK and MW0XOT 
The wind nearly blew away our tent when we took it down, we had to use our headlamps on the way back to the car as it was pitch dark but it was certainly worth the attempt!
73, Sylvia OE5YYN and Peter OE5AUL
8 Likes
You seemed to be really looking forward to this event so I was pleased to offer you an African summit. I had to fight to get the antenna to work on 15m. You canāt stick things in the ground on old volcanoes so I had to build a quick cairn of lava to support the counterpoise pole and didnāt have a chance to get it right. Still got another S2S in the log and was delighted to give you IOTA AF-004 and SOTA FU-042. I think this may also be in an EAFF zoneā¦ need to check.
Thanks Andy, the contact with you finished the day off nicely. I have just entered my logs and guess what - Just broke the 1000 Summit-to-Summit points level. Actually it was with the S2S contact with Kevin in W2 rather than yours but it all turned out to be good experience - looking forward to one in spring perhaps, when the weather isnāt so āgrizzleyā.
73 Ed.
P.S. thanks for the IOTA as well.
1 Like
Great fun !
Thanks for organizing the event Gerald. Worked plenty of s2s into North America and a couple of good contacts into Canada.
The only thing that brought me off the mountain was the cold temperature. I need to man-up !
Stuff like this is what makes this hobby so awesome. Just the combination of many enthuastic people from around the planet.
Jonathan
2 Likes
Hi folks.
It was a beautiful day out here ! worked a few S2S. More details to come later in my activation report.
For Ed: I was also hearing many " CQ LZ contest " but i wasnāt bothered too much.
73
Eric
VA2MO.
4 Likes
That WAS great fun and I hope we continue to do it twice yearly. Thanks much to all the activators, especially those who endured adverse weather.
I operated from the sun-soaked summit of W2/EH-001 with my 44ft doublet supported by a 33ft pole, with an excellent take-off toward EU. Noise level was incredibly low. A KX3 w ATU was feeding the doublet.
I ended up working 20 distinct EU summits and 12 NA summits. As predicted, 17M was definitely the āhappeningā band here. The tally of s2s qsoās ended up as:
FWIW, I listened for every single spot until I pulled the plug at 1645Z. Regrets to Saku OH2NOS - I just had no copy. I think I heard DM7N well but he had too big a pileup going at the time and I never ran into him again.
I worked: CT1DBS, DL4ROB, EA2IF, EB2GKK, EA8/M0FMF, F5LKW, F5UKL, G0MFR, M1EYP, 2E0YYY, M0HCU, GW4AZS, GW0WPO, GW2HFR, MW0IDX, GW4OIG, HB9BCB, HB9AFI, HB9DQM, HB9FVF, HB9BIN, OE9HRV, S52FT, VE6IXD, W3CDW, N2GBR, W4PH, K2JB, KI4SVM, N6JZT, W6PNG, K6HPX, NJ7V, WA7JTM, AC0PR
About 6 miles (10km) of hiking with 1500ft of elevation gain to access the summit.
Thanks again & 73,
Barry N1EU
11 Likes
Excellent score, Barry!
What kind of feeder was in use?
Thanks Heinz! I was using windowed 300-ohm, low-loss.
Thanks for the qso & 73, Barry
Sylvia and Peter, you were the best of the EU activators I heard in VK3 on 20m. I didnāt like my chances to break through the european and contest QRM so didnāt try and call more a few times.
We had a BBQ at our astronomy society (on a rural site) and since the moon rose at 1347 UTC (1247am local) I figured I would put the 20m vertical up after dismantling the astrophotography gear as VOACAP showed some potential to parts of the US, not so much to Europe. If things were good, I had a summit 20 minutes drive away. Zero noise once the circuit breakers were flipped
Anyway, heard you, 2E0YYY, YO6PIB, M1EYP, and MM0FMF and one or two other /P G stations that I didnāt catch the calls of. Without contest like conditions 
some would workable on a normal day with some difficulty (the cw stations for sure). I also heard traces of W3CDW, but not much of any other US activators. Band choice may have played a role. 30m would have been better perhaps. An interesting way to end the evening anyway.
Andrew VK3JBL
4 Likes
I couldnāt get through to the US with my long wire and kx3.
I know most of you use dipoles but the ease of throwing a wire on any vegitation in cold weather is epic!
Is the difference with 10watt that big!?!
What a blast 
.Four EU S2S and nine NA S2S. Count me in for next time. I had a hard time in CW pausing the pileup to listen for S2S, Iāll improve at that for the next one.
73, Malcolm VE2DDZ
2 Likes
I wonder why it seems to be much easier for us to get through to VK than to the USA. Peter OE5AUL had no problems contacting several VK stations S2S from the same summit during EU-VK day but today NA was pretty unreachable for us. Oh well, probably only propagation to blameā¦ 
Sylvia OE5YYN
Just got home from the s2s event. Weather was cold but otherwise good here in AZ.
Things went pretty wellā¦managed twenty three s2s QSOās on seventeen different s2s summits.
Worked Europeā¦GW (2), OE (1), and Africa EA8. GWās on 20M, OE and EA8 on 17M. Heard a strong HB but I could not break the pileup with my lowly dipole.
Also worked stations in 9A, ZL, and KH6ā¦not SOTA s2s unfortunately.
Anyhow great fun. Pretty sure working four s2s contacts over the pond in one day is a record for me.
Thanks to allā¦what fun!
Now if there only was a VK/ZL/JA to NA s2s eventā¦
73
Pete
WA7JTM
W7A/CS-045
3 Likes
Yes, I enjoyed that too, thanks everyone!
Three NA S2S on 18 MHz CW, Three UK on 14 MHz ssb, HB9AFI/P on 14 MHz CW and YO6PIB/P on 14 MHz ssb.
5 Watts from FT 817 to 14 MHz inverted V dipole, same antenna tuned with Elecraft AATU on 18 MHz.
Generally good weather for me, though a little chilly for sitting around. And I discovered that a head torch isnāt much use in low cloud (Think driving in fog with headlights on). Happily it didnāt extend far below the summit.
Looking forward to the next one
73
Adrian
G4AZS
3 Likes