I have been in contact with Barry N1EU and Ed DD5LP with respect to options for the next NA - EU S2S QSO Party. We have settled on Saturday 3 November 2018 between 14:00 UTC to 17:00 UTC. This will be the core activity period for the event, with those that wish starting an hour or so earlier and / or finishing later.
This date has been arranged to take advantage of the dates when we change from summer time to winter time in both the USA and Europe. It is a few weeks earlier than in previous years which we hope will help with the extended stay on the summits.
In the light of the widening of SOTA in the Americas, from this point it is proposed that the event will be renamed the Trans-Atlantic S2S QSO Party
We have discussed that before Tom and on balance it appeared that there were more people “in work” than “retired”.Personally, being semi-retired and self-employed it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. However, I don’t think we want to encourage people to go sick for the day just to participate in what after all is a leisure activity.
Maybe we could have an occasional one-off weekday event, sometime? Maybe I should try to organise one? Loads of people work at evenings, weekends etc - the Monday to Friday 9-5 model might still be just about modal, but it is probably at its lowest relative level in history with the current global economy.
As for pension, well I’ve got a bit of one coming from my years in teaching, though our lovely government keep putting that back a couple of years every so often. I’ll be lucky to see a penny of it much before I’m 70 years old. But with the self-inflicted lifestyle change associated with going back to my original trade as a session musician, I’ll now probably never “retire” as such.
Well the route is working. Just worked NW of Boston from a small pimple near the south coast (G/SC-007).
52/53 just before 1800 UTC. Power my end 100W into a short vertical on 20m SSB. That was my 4th contact (and 3rd attempt at this hill ), so v pleased, thanks Dave.
Sorry to hear about that Andy. It is a superb little hill, especially when ascended on a fine autumn morning. Probably a candidate for one of the S2S events where a heavy backpack might be the order of the day.