Bad WX for SOTA, as it’s been raining since the begining of the afternoon.
Let me tell you I’ve been copying V51DM (Namibia) on 18MHz with 59 signals on my remote station at 1615 utc.
He was running 500 watts and he had quite a pileup. I called him a few times with my 100 watts with no luck, so I doubt I would be able to work him from a SOTA with my FT-817 at 5 watts…
Anyway, TEP conditions are indeed there.
73,
Guru
It’s being in the right place at the right time Guru. There was propagation to Zimbabwe, Swaziland & Malawi on 12m (May 2014) and some furious pileups. I heard 3DA0NJ in QSO with a Z21 and then 3DA0NJ QSY’d and I got him just after he moved. So worked with 5W SSB from an 817 to 12m 1/4waveGP from a summit. I had to work hard to bag 7Q7VM and never did work the Z21.
Just lucky being QRP. Most of the time you are not lucky though…
You were lucky to find him first. That’s the key thing. A QRP signal from a summit can surely make the distant trip. The thing is that being usually tiny a QRP signal coming from far away, it gets fully buried in the pileup QRM, unless you are very lucky or very skilled on the way you call and the operator is good and particularly careful being kind towards weak QRP signals, which is something we sometimes see fortunately.
This was not exactly a TEP contact but I have just worked 5V7EI with 100watts and inverted vee dipole of my remote station working split on 18MHz CW. He picked me up just on my very first and only call. Good ears!
Cheers,
Guru