VOACAP is always pessimistic!
Any G/LD or NP activators fancy a coffee afterwards? Iâm heading from south Lakes back to NE. Youâll recognise me by my soggy appearance
Iâm activating in the lakes but not sure which summit yet.
It rained yesterday and it rained today too, but predictions say it wonât rain tomorrow, so Iâm going to believe (crossed fingers and toes) and I have already raised my alert for my activation of EA2/NV-148 starting at about 12h00 utc.
My LiFePo batteries have just been recharged so I hope to have plenty of energy tomorrow 
Will have 3G signal so Iâll be able to spot and be checking Sotawatch in order to find you all if you havenât found me first.
Hope to S2S with you all tomorow as well as being chased by many.
However, let me say that I have the feel that propagation conditions wonât be too cooperative for DX 
But weâll surely have fun. Donât worry!
73,
Guru
Okay Andy. Will review that possibility when we have been washed off our hill. Probably need a brandy more than a brew.
Just weighed the backpack with the poles and all the kit on board - 16.5kg. Pleased that LD-059 is an easy ascent.
Looking forward to hearing (seeing in the case of data) signals from lots of you tomorrow. Have safe journeys and ascents all of you who are taking part.
73, Gerald G4OIG
Hello SOTA Friends.
I will be QRV on F/CR-142 and looking for s2s.
C U 73 QRO
Roger
@VY2HF⌠keep an eye on the spotting network for Mark (NK8Q) and I⌠(in Pennsylvania)
Richard // N2GBR
I will be on an 8300 ft summit here in Arizona in the morning and will be looking for EUâŚalthough it may be a pretty tough path this time of yearâŚbut u never know!
73
Pete
WA7JTM
W7A
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Sorry all, I wont make my activation today - got up this morning feeling awful and rain is guaranteed on the summit exactly around the time I would be there, with evening commitments, I canât risk being really bad after getting a soaking on the summit.
Hope you are all successful and get some S2S contacts in your logs,
73 Ed.
Sorry to read you are not feeling well and WX is not good.
I hope youâll recover soon and youâll be, at least, able to chase some of us.
Partly cloudy sky here this morning but it looks like the sun will finally win.
Cheers,
Guru
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Just returned from the activation. Rough band conditions today, but managed a few QSOs on 17 and 20 meters. No NA<>EU S2S, sadly, although SA4BLM did save the day for an EU contact.
I heard a some of the EU activators but was unable to raise them (IW2OBX, OE9HRV, and EA8/PC9DB/P) QSB was high and signal strength was at the ragged edge of readability, requiring many repeats to dig the calls out of the mush. Looked around for VY2HF for a PEI contact but nothing heard. Sorry Brent!
Antenna was inv Vee linked dipole on 10 M extensible pole, rig was KX2. Summit was unpopulated, raw and damp. We came prepared so had a good time. Hiking on Prospect Hill is very easy and the rain held off much to our amazement. XYL was happy about that!
Hereâs hoping for better conditions in November.
Bruce - WB8OGK
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Exactly as I was fearing, we had very poor propagation conditions today on 20-30m and not a single NA<>EU S2S QSO could be logged.
I activated EA2/NV-148, which has a dirt road up to the very summit and a nice flat area with conrete tables and benches to make it very comfortable today, as I had a guest.
I was joined by the old University mate of mine I talked about in a previous post of this same thread. He is a non ham mountaineer very interested in tasting a bit of what ham radio and SOTA is about.
He enjoyed very much todayâs experience and I must thank him because he was very helpful while setting up and dismantling the antenna system, as well as with the pictures/videos.
We got a couple of drops of rain while setiing up and I feared that we may have to run away to avoid being soaked by a sudden rain shower, but it finally wasnât like that and we enjoyed a mostly sunny very nice afternoon.
The endfed wire was put inside the telescopic fisghing pole as to make an inverted L like the one I did for the VK-ZL<>EU S2S event, with the elevated counterpoise wire sloping down at an angle and its end tied to the branch of a bush.
But propagation was not even closely as good as it was that glorious March 11th of the VK-ZL<>EU S2S event and after 2 hours activation I didnât manage to hear any single Northamerican activator and only 2 Northamerican chasers made it into my log.
SFI was below 70 today and the signals were coming weak most of the times with severe QSB, but even in such poor conditions, with the tiny 5 watts of my FT-817, I managed to log 52 QSOs, 10 of which were S2S with european summits.
Unfortunately we had contest activity on 20m CW, so that segment of the band was pretty busy and noisy. Thatâs why I worked SSB for quite some time, which was a joy for my companion, who otherwise would have surely got bored after some few minutes of ununderstandable-for-him morse code.
This is the full log:
And this the S2S log:
Thanks to all the chasers for your calls and QSOs, as well as to those who kindly raised a spot for me on Sotawatch. Very useful and highly appreciated.
73,
Guru
2 Likes
Weather prediction for today indicated some rain but this morning the probability was down to 40 % so i decided to take a chance and hiked up VE2/ES-002 Brome. Mixture of sun and clouds and not too cold nor too hot.
Band conditions were very poor⌠I only worked a few USA stations on 20m and another one on 17m. But to my surprise i did hear a few stations calling from France on 17. So after beeing spotted on 18.130, 2E0WDX/mobile answered me on the first call, what a surprise !
Afterwards i did hear OE9HRV on OE/VB-494 calling and making qsoâs on 18.137 @ 15:02 h utc but unfortunately he did not copy me. 
Oh well at least i know there was a possibility to work Europe on 17m.
I have just tested for the first time my newly acquired 17m end-fed sloper ant. from LNR precision, i will certainly bring it along on a next activation. 
Sorry i do not have pictures this time⌠actually i do but after a mandatory upgrade of win 10 on my pc i cannot acces my external devices anymore⌠GRRRR. 
LOG:
Time Call Band Mode Notes
14:03z VE2TOW 144MHz FM local
14:04z VA2QR 144MHz FM local
14:04z VE2NCG 144MHz FM local
14:10z VE2TOW 14MHz SSB local
14:11z VE2NCG 14MHz SSB local
14:12z NS7P 14MHz SSB Oregon
14:12z N4EX 14MHz SSB SC
14:25z K5KPE 14MHz SSB AR
14:45z 2E0WDX 18MHz SSB England
14:46z VE2NCG 18MHz SSB local
14:56z KG5HVO 18MHz SSB LA.
14:58z VA2NQ 144MHz FM local
73
Eric
VA2MO
1 Like
Hi at All,
We also NO NA<>EU s2s.
For the first time I have tried a digital mode in sota activation, with kx3, I called cq sota on 14.073 in MFSK16,.
I was able to log 14 EU cheasers and 2 EU s2s on 20 and 17mt.
With me there was Martino IU2IJW, itâs was the first activation for him.
He have managed a log a only NA contact, KA1R Matthew on 20mt SSB,
Itâs always a pleasure to take part these events!
waiting for the good propagation
73 de Roberto IW2OBX
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I guess you have tried everything, but just in case you havenât let me ask:
Canât you transfer the pictures to your PC via bluetooth?
Hello Guru, no i do not have wi-fi just direct physical connection by cable via usb port. The problem is Win 10 upon update re-configures the pc and forces you to buy an âappâ $$$$ in order to download the photos from the camera.
Sounds very unlikely. USB is fundamental to W10 IO. We have plenty of W10 machines at work and USB works supremely well.
Whatâs the camera?
Canon powershot sd750. Everything worked perfectly well before this forced update.
Same thing with the cell phone wich i use for photos only.
A quick Google suggests this Canon USB camera is not using the USB class drivers. Thereâs a standard for cameras so you can transfer the images to and from computers. Or the camera pretends to be a disk drive using another standard USB driver. But this seems to use Canon drivers and the camera model is 10 years old. So from a support point of view, this camera predates the Ark and probably is not supported any more. Keep people like me employed by buying a new camera which you can throw away in 3 years time. If it worked before with W10 then there should still be a driver for it.
When you connect it up to the PC, if the PC doesnât know what the USB device is, Windows should go and search WindowsUpdate for the driver and fetch it automatically. WHen you plug it in what does Windows say?
When i plug the camera in the popup says: âthis app canât openâ , âgo to the windows app storeâ.
Like i said,everything worked fine yesterdayâŚ
UPDATE:
âŚOK wait a minute⌠i just found another way to get at my files and copy them to my âpicturesâ folder⌠but windows 10 really is great for confusing people and to pry us into buying unnecessary apps $$$$
sorry for the Trouble Andy 
and thanks for taking to time to help me ! sorry for hacking this post⌠please return to normal topic !
VA2MO