Apologies if you were waiting for NP-030 yesterday.After negotiating a cycle race we arrived at Butter Tubs Pass cattle grid to find torrential rain and a full gale sweeping it across the moor. We waited for almost an hour with no improvement, Audrey could not open the car door on her (windward) side. Eventually we decided that it would be there another day so made our way back through the cycle race to activate little LD-050 instead. Had to feel sorry for the cyclists who had climbed and descended Butter Tubs and were last seen ascending the old Garsdale/Dent road in the teeth of the wind and rain.
Gummers How is a nice little hill and we did the frequencies in reverse order to be sure of a spot to point out the change. The rain came down very heavily at one point forcing us quickly into our waterproof over-trousers. When I stood up I found that I had two ends of feeder emerging from the waistband of my waterproofs,one end going to the rig and the other to the antenna and no amount of tugging would release it.Seems that I was sitting on the feeder when I put the trousers on and the feeder was wrapped round one leg. The BNC end was delicatly pulled through with much hilarity (the rig was removed first!)
A nice little activation with 40 odd contacts. Thanks for the spots,we will try NP-030 again soon
73
Rob
G4RQJ
Forgot to mention that while in QSO with Phil OBK in poor conditions on 40m cw someone QSP,d my report to him. Phil as a result would not take the qso as valid and we did not make it on any other band so he missed the point. Please don’t QSP reports, it may seem kind but it’s not really.
Thanks and 73
Rob
G4RQJ
Couldn’t a different report have been sent, and received? Bit of a nuisance that. Jimmy is noticing a problem on SSB, that I don’t experience on CW. That is, he will give a report, the chaser will say “Thank you for the x by y” - but get their report wrong. Jimmy goes back with the correct report, but the chaser has disappeared. I then need to get a message through the airwaves or the net that the QSO has not happened, because Jimmy is busy crossing the log out…!
So as well as “don’t QSP”, make sure you have received your report correctly before leaving the freqency.
This happened on no less than four of Jimmy’s QSOs on Ben Nevis, but thankfully the messages got through, and each chaser reappeared some minutes later to complete properly.
Already missing the Scottish Highlands - what a great place! Expensive to eat out though - must get more into a self-catering habit next time 
Tom M1EYP
Yes Rob - thanks for trying so hard to complete our null QSO. It was completely off putting when the “helpful” person passed on your 559 report to me, so after struggling to listen to your 3rd over to me without success, enough was enough. So whoever it was please don’t do that again - it’s not within the SOTA spirit and is very off putting. As a rule I don’t call stations when I haven’t a good chance of hearing my report in the clear, on that day I was 90% sure I could make a contact, QSB kicked in and the 90% became a 10% chance in a matter of seconds. 40m is like that sometimes.
I wish all chasers only called stations when they had a good chance of hearing their report. You only have to listen regularly and realise that some operators are bluffing through their contact as their timing is so far out when they reply to the activator, after their report has been sent. I think they are using ESP not DSP! I like using SOTAWatch as many do, and work many SOTAs from it whilst doing other jobs around the place, thanks to the helpful spotters (I also spot when I am able to), but the system does encourage people if they are that way inclined to call the stations they see on their screen blindly on CW, when they can’t properly hear the stations.
I wonder how other CW activators deal with this when they are doing SOTA - activator calls chaser from the pile up gives RST, chaser comes back to activator with a report but the timing is wrong - do you log them? I don’t at this point. I ask the chaser to repeat my RST giving them two chances and if they fail to come back with the answer it is a null QSO. They are free to try again later in the activation of course.
This happens a few times on most CW activations for me (maybe only 3% to 4% of QSOs) and is more likely when I am using 5 watts or less. I haven’t found it to happen at all on SSB.
Are there any comments from CW activators how they deal with this situation?
73 Phil
Interestingly, I haven’t found this problem whatsoever on my CW activations. But I have observed it while Jimmy is operating on HF SSB.
Tom M1EYP
In reply to M1EYP:
Already missing the Scottish Highlands - what a great place!
You should try being here… nearest mountains are probably 750 miles away. Everywhere you look it’s flat, very wierd. Still it does mean I can see the 1450ft Sears Tower over in downtown Chicago some 20-25 miles away from the hotel window.
Expensive to eat out though
I’ve just had a genuine Chicago Pizza. More than one man can comfortably eat was $7.00, say about £3.80. A beer was £3.00! They could give the food away as long as you drank enough.
Andy W9/M0FMF
Schaumburg, Illinois