I went today to do my third ever SOTA activation.
This turned to be a sum of unexpected inconveniences.
First, the planned road to approach the summit was in so bad conditions that I had to change the plan and head a 2 hour walk to get to the summit.
Then I started calling in 14 ssb with very little success: I imagine propagation was poor.
After a time there I moved to CW portion and it seems there were many more operators there. Due to my little ears to speed up catching the incoming calls (too many together for me, sorry!) after a while I organised the mini pile-up by numbers and that worked much better.
I alert about the QRS in the Sota system but it seems many people is unconscious of that situation.
Last, rain was present and I had to shut down the activation… What a pity many people couldn’t get the summit today! I felt frustrated.
I couldn’t even activate in 7 MHz band this time
Anyway, I know now the route to this summit and therefore I expect I’ll activate that again in the near future.
Thanks to all that participated and my apoogies for being too short today.
It was a pleasure to hear you on your 3rd activation today Ignacio. Thank you for the CW SOTA contact.
All CW chasers should know that you never send faster than the activator - to do so is very bad manners and a sign of a poor operator. Sadly many chasers do not understand this.
They should not need reminding in the Alert and do not deserve a reply.
Great news…, another sota cw activator in our area…
I prefer make cw on the summit, first because i dont like disturb the people be on the summit.
Second because Im QRP 5w, and is more easy to heard me…
Third, also its more easy to control the chasers than SSB.
Roy know whats happend with QRQ players, but the people do this, dont understand and cant learn…!
Ignacio, wath is your equipement and antenna?
Im using ft-817, manual tunner and 9m fiberglass pole…
In reply to EA2EA:
Hi Iñaki!!
I’m also using a FT-817 + Tuner LDG Z-817.
I have a 7m long fishpole.
I use 2 antennas (homebrew):
-one vertical plus 4 ground plane wires plus UNUN to connect to the tuner, and
-one Link Dipole that doesn’t require the tuner, but performs poorly for 40 m (too low installation height giving some 2,5 SWR).
I intend to write an article for our URE magazine describing the aerial system.
I’m happy to contribute to the CW activators in EA although I wish I could improve my CW skillness to deal with big Pile-up much more easily.