It seems lately that 20 and 40 have been pretty noisy. Anyone willing to give 17 meters a try. It has been clear as a bell lately.
In reply to KB3UYT:
I hope to be out Sunday morning and afternoon from the GM/ES area. I’m not sure of the target summit yet, depends on WX tomorrow. I’ll be happy to try 18.086+/- instead of 14.061+/- and I’ll either self-spot or will get a chaser to spot when I QSY from 60m/40m.
Andy
MM0FMF
In reply to KB3UYT:
It seems lately that 20 and 40 have been pretty noisy. Anyone willing
to give 17 meters a try. It has been clear as a bell lately.
For Stateside contacts, 15m works best for me. I normally find Rich N4EX working his QRP station, on most of my actvations.
73 Mike
2E0YYY
In reply to KB3UYT:
I tried 17m today from Pen Y Ghent (G/NP010), called for 30mins on CW around 18.086, no takers 
I think is definately worth trying again though, I think higher power would help - I was running less than 100mW. LOL!
73
Colin
M0CGH
Edit - I’ve just checked www.reversebeacon.net and I got picked up by OH6BG, at least my QRPp got somewhere! 
In reply to M0CGH:
Excellent. Not only do you know that the system was radiating but radiating enough to be detected 2000km away 
What was the antenna Colin?
Andy
MM0FMF
In reply to MM0FMF
What was the antenna Colin?
Rig was homebrew RockMite type circuit, antenna was my standard inverted vee multi-link dipole. I use a 7m fishing pole from G3CWI, dipole centre sits about 1m from the top (6m ish). My dipole has links for 17/20/30 and 40m. I originally had extra sections for 80m, but I took them off as I haven’t been using that band. Really ought to try 80m again some day, I have a nice 1.5W rig for that band.
73
Colin
M0CGH
In reply to KB3UYT:
Best laid plans etc. Sorry I wasn’t able to get on to 17m today. On the first summit the ground was too well frozen to use any tent pegs. There were lots of rocks that could be used to support the fishing rod mast but from experience that only works when it isn’t too windy. Sadly it was very windy. My 17m vertical likes to clear of nearby metal. I had the mast tied to a fence post but there was so much barbed wire I knew the antenna would be poor if it would match at all.
The second summit was a possible as there were some old wooden fence posts I could use. But I arrived later than expected and there wasn’t time to try 17m as well as another band. Also, it started to snow so I went QRT early.
Andy
MM0FMF
In reply to KB3UYT:
Having seen your post the other day, and seeing the weather forecast for today was quite good, I thought I’d have a look at 17m. I made up a dipole for 18.130MHz last night (I don’t do much HF operating) and today set off up Scald Law GM/SS-125.
Once set up I self-spotted as well as calling CQ (though the self-spot seems to have vanished into cyberspace, I’ll check with Andy to see if I’m doing it right). No SOTA response (not too surprising with the missing spot!) but I had four excellent contacts with a bit of chat over half an hour or so.
The first was Leo OE3LPB near Vienna, then Don W3DF in Maryland, a superbly clear signal (58 on the miserly 817 S meter - he gave me 53-4) in the quiet band. He was running 1kW to a beam and quite impressed with my 2.5W from the FT-817 (I was not running at full power since my LiPo battery is only an 11V one). Nearby Fraser MM0HCD/M in Newbridge called in to comment on the clear audio 
and after a gap I managed to qualify the summit by answering a CQ from Bert SE2I north of the Arctic Circle.
I heard but didn’t work several other US stations - so clearly 17m SOTA across the pond on ssb is quite definitely on, even with just 2.5W, a dipole at 5m, and a sunspot number in the 70s.
So go for it and good luck! It’s encouraged me to think a bit more about building that lightweight homebrew HF ssb rig!
73
John GM8OTI
Update: sorry folks, finger trouble when self-spotting - I’d missed out the space between the frequency and the mode. The excuse is that it was very cold …