The 2015/2016 official SOTA Challenge

Hi Mike, I can’t see if anyone else answered your point - so here goes. To operate on 6m in Germany you need to inform the authorities of your intent. Operation is only allowed from the station address on your licence, only in horizontal polarisation and with a maximum of 25W ERP only on CW or SSB (if I read the notes correctly FM and AM modes not allowed since December 31st. 2014). So as DL1DVE says no SOTA portable activations on 6m from Germany, unless I guess you own a house on a SOTA summit and operate from batteries in your back garden to a temporary horizontal dipole. The usable band is limited also to 50.030 to 51.000 so stations listening elsewhere on the band will not hear calls from DL.

73 Ed.

Things have changed a bit recently although it’s still not allowed to operate /m or /p.

A foreign ham with CEPT license can operate on 6m in DL if he’s operating a German station as a guest operator at the location mentioned in the license document. He then has to use the German call sign, e.g.: “This is DG7ACF operated by KD5KC.”

No need to inform the authorities anymore.
Max. bandwidth 12 kHz, so AM/FM allowed
25 W PEP. Ant horizontal.
Logbook is mandatory.

BNetzA info sheet (German only).

Ahoi,
Pom

Having read the postings on this page, I wonder is anybody planning to use FM on 51.51??

I was thinking about potential antennas for 6m vertical, the best compromise I can find is this one

Not to long and means and it means it can be rolled up into a bag??

I daresay this could be used on 50.150 with SSB, probably wont be to lossy

Your thoughts please??

Matt G8XYJ

Matt,

I’ve been looking into a variety of antenna designs for my attempts on 10 and 6m. One of the antennas I was looking at was a sleeve dipole for 6m as it can be made very light. That design should be simple to scale from the FM section to SSB simply by lengthening the sections.

I’m not sure how good the ionosphere will be by Summer maybe 10m F2 will still be viable but I doubt there will be 6m F2. I can say now I’ll be delighted if there is any 6m F2. That means the majority of 6m “DX” propagation is going to be single hop SpE where a slightly higher angle of take off can be desirable and so a vertical dipole is fine for that. The sleeve dipole has the massive advantage that it is end fed so you don’t have to figure out how to make a stand off so the feed leaves horizontally for 1/4wave or more.

I’m part way through making something more DX-y for 10m however.

I was thinking of trying one of those (and also 2m/70cm dual-band version). I guess being on the outside of a GRP fishing pole rather than inside a PVC tube (just wind the choke onto PVC) could slightly affect the tuning.

I made a roll-up Slim JIM for 6m. It took a bit of hacking about to find a good match. I haven’t tried it on air yet. Would there likely be any takers for 51.51 FM from G/SP-004?

Simon

Sounds good Andy

I think a dipole is the best and simplest system to go, I need to ideally find some telescopic whips that can at least extend to 1.5 metres! Unless of course, I can source some 1m ones then turn some aluminum to make up the rest!

In terms of 10m, I need to get to MG first before I dabble on that, but I will be using a 1/4 wave vertical more than likely. I suppose i could put links in one of those to make it resonant on 6m as well.

I am tempted by FM and SSB, but the beauty of FM is that I have a lovely little Alinco DR-06M which supplies 10 watts on FM, so would get out well from the hills. It’s currently sat in the shack, on a shelf doing sod all. That said the 817 would not be that much of a hassle to take up and gives me all modes including PSK from PSK droid and my smartphone.

Simon - I think it should be alright o suspend it on the outer of a pole, I would buy some 41mm waste pipe and wind the choke round that then cable tie it in place so I can remove the plastic tubing and keep it purely Coax.

I did think about getting some bee hive caps in and making a small coil inside a 35mm camera film tube and making one of these for 6m. Dave M0MYA, a good friend, experimenting with them, but found them tricky due to the narrow band width of thin and lightweight wire that was use for the radiating section

http://www.70mhz.org/index.php?categoryid=6&p2_articleid=278

So i think the better bet is the coaxial end fed dipole. I am just pleased to see that people are looking into making their own antenna’s rather than buying commercially available ones.

A good cheap antenna I have been using for 2m FM is a T2TL antenna, a few people have been using them for 10m or with CB with good reports. Mine is made from rg174, total length aprox 3-4m rolls up and weighs next to nothing always handy to have in the bag when the weather turns for the worse.

I was planning on tuning the doublet up for the 6m, but managed to rescue 10m of andrews LDF4-50a that was off to the skip at work , just wondering if a moxon may be possible if I can get the time to make one that is.

Making your antennas is something everyone can do. In most cases it’s just bits of wire and coax/ribbon feeder. Or stuff that can be made from materials you can work with hand tools like PVC pipe and aluminum rod. Of all the antennas I use, only a few are not homebrew. There’s the rubber ducks on the handy/817 and I have a PCB Yagi for 23cms where I bought the board and soldered a bit of hardline to it. Everything else: 30/40/60 dipole, 10/12/15/17/20 vertical, 12m 1/4wave GP, 2m J-pole, 70cms Yagi, 23cms bowtie.

Here’s the 23cms PCB Yagi alongside a mouse.

So making antennas is all part of the fun.

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Any spare LDF-250/450 or hardline (UT-141 etc) and SMA sockets/plugs will be eagerly accepted and recycled! :smile:

Well it is now March 16th which means there are only 2 months till the start of the challenge.

I was wondering how well the FT 817 rubber duck works on 6m. With the long section screwed on top and it sat on the MFJ 259, the best SWR was at 51.480MHz. Tuning was very sharp, only a small movement from that frequency either way had the SWR climbing quickly. So what does this mean? Well it means the 817 rubber duck is probably worth having in the bag as a reserve antenna for 6m operation during the challenge.

My old friend Andy G0FTD (him of the shopping trolley mobile fame) came up with this antenna for 10m sometime back. Again something to consider as a reserve antenna maybe.

Hi Andy and all,
Despite being pretty sure that I wont’ have neither many chances nor much time to be in the summits at the good times for catching good propagation conditions on 6 and 10m, I’ve been thinking about what type of antennas I may prepare to, at least, participate in the Challenge.
Initially I was thinking on taking with me a home made 5/8 wave antenna for 6m band that I made some years ago up of copper water pipe and cut in 3 pieces easily connectable with the help of threaded pipe connectors welded to each ends. This would be for 6m and I was thinking on either a GP made with a 3m long telescopic fishing rode I recently bought in Decathlon and a 1/4 wave wire inside it plus radials to be laid on ground for 10m or a home made bazooka dipole for 10m, which I would keep as an inverted V on top of the 6m 5/8 wave antenna.
All these plans and considerations were being baked in my mind while I was also thinking about possibly buying some HF mobile antennas to be attached with the help of some PVC tube to my new and recently homebrew wooden rack for my SOTA gear. A good friend and SOTA mate informed me a couple of days ago of a set of 5 mobile HF antennas he was planning to put on sale and I told him I was interested on them.
They will hopefully be delivered to me tomorrow.
They will be for 10, 15, 20 40 and 80m band and I’ll use them in my car but also will prepare something for them to be used on SOTA activations.
I think they should be a very quickly deployable antenna and we’ll see how it performs compared to the 7m long wire GP with 4 radials I currently use most of the times.
Should they perform well, I will probably make another one for 6m inspired in the design of Andy G0FTD.
Hope to be checking them soon in a summit.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF

What do you think about a Slim Jim 450 ohm ladder antenna? I did the calcs on:
http://www.m0ukd.com/calculators/slim-jim-and-j-pole-calculator/
and gave me about 4.4 m length (good for a 5-6m fishing rod)

It would not perform as good as a quad or yagi antenna, but it is a very portable one, IMHO

One of my first ever QSOs with my 817 some years ago was with a Portugese station on 6m using the rubber duck. I was stood with the 817 just sat on top of the car on a car park in Sandbach, so not entirely a mountainous region. So I can confirm that in real life it does work, although I’ve never repeated it.

Ian G7ADF

Hi Mikel,

I made one (haven’t tried it yet). The dimensions from the calculator did not result in a good match. The best match I found (by cut-and-try) was with the feed point at about 160mm up from the bottom. I found also with other bands that the position for best match is some way off the calculator location for these narrow window-line Slim JIMs. It wants some proper modelling I think.

73, Simon

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The “Hentenna” looks also interesting: horizontal polarization when mounted vertically (!), 1/2 wave long instead of 3/4 for the slim jim, easy to build and carry

http://www.hamuniverse.com/hentenna.html

http://dk7zb.darc.de/Quadlong/Hentenna.htm

http://www.hamradio.in/circuits/hentenna.php

I’ll be going with my existing antennas:

10m: vertical with elevated groundplane. Essentially four bits of quarter wave wire and a SOTA Pole.

6m: SB6 2 element beam (Moxon) & SOTA Pole.

Both: End-fed on mini pole and matched with Micro Z zed match tuner - this works on both 10m and 6m.

If I am focusing on one band or the other, I will use the dedicated antenna. If intending to use both 10 and 6 in the same activation, I’ll use the end-fed and tuner.

Should be fun! The 12m Challenge certainly was.

Are you loading against your pole Tom ?, or should that be five ?

1x radiator
3x radial, sloping at 45degs

Had it in my head it might be four wire CP. Yet to try it with three. My 10m GP has an incredibly wide match for what I thought.

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Things with a wide match often imply low efficiency.