This summit is not far away from me. With a quick look on the map Saturday evening my first estimate was 2 hours including driving. After all this only Jura and not the Alpes. On the way to the summit I see a sign “Le Colomby de Gex 1h45min” - I will be late by one and half hours from ETA. Tune to 10.116 kHz. Some DX chasers working there. Tune 1 kHz down and call CQ. Try to get YU4JN at 0911 UTC. Works with G4FTC. On 20 m band MRD stations. Go to 7.031 kHz. 0926 UTC I hear DL7RAG working some SOTA activator. Try to offer call sign F5VGL/P but no result. 0940 UTC same problem with HB9RE on 3561.5 kHz. He is working G3VQO. I hear Les bearly just above the noise. I try to offer my call sign also to Les, but I could not understand response if there was any. Try some random QSOs on 18088 kHz with no reply. On 10116 kHz W1MK is calling DXs but does not hear me. After one hour it is clear that nobody can hear me. Was the propagation so bad or there was too much other traffic? Or there was a technical problem in my antenna setup? Power to dummy load looks ok.
Radio: FT817ND, 2.5 or 5 W CW to wire loop, T1 ATU
I found the propogation conditions very poor today. On a day when there were plenty of UK and European activators out I could hear very few and then it was very marginal. No I dont think there is a problem with your rig just a bad day for radio and very flat bands plus of course wall-to-wall contesters poluting the airwaves.
I listened for your sigs a lot and heard nothing … also there was propagation to France at this time because I heard the usual French SOTA chasers - if you would like to do some tests with your rig and /P antenna pse let me know and I can be QRL any day from 0600z for giving reports on your sigs.
73 de CRIS
GM4FAM
SOTA chasers - if you would like to do some tests with your rig and /P
antenna pse let me know and I can be QRL any day from 0600z for giving
reports on your sigs.
Thanks Cris for your offer. There are a lot of CW stations available almost any time on 40 m for a short QSO. Need to test the system before next activation. Probably it was the antenna or the operator.
Hi Jaakko,
i think hf-propagation is vy poor in these days.not easy with qrp and short antennas.in my last activations i used a 42m-longwire to make the qso´s,because many normaly vy loud chasers are not as loud as normal.also we have deep qsb-phases on 40m the last activations.the only band that works ok to UK is the 30m-band around meridian/morning.hope the propagation becomes better next days…vy 73 and good results with your antenna test´s…