CONGRATS, Andrew! Looking forward to a CW QSO with you.
All Best, and BAAAA
Ken
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Well done and congratulations Andrew,a little while since we worked so lets hope conditions improve and we make more contacts.
73 Don G0RQL.
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As an indication of progress, I first activated a summit on 1st Feb 2013 when VK1 was officially added to the SOTA family. That was VK1/AC-037, 1 point. For several years I averaged about 200 points per year, but my progress slowed in the 4th and 5th years due to health problems (some self inflicted, sprained ankle and fractured bone in the foot, then a fractured radius in my right arm, a result of slipping on loose gravel returning to the car after an activation, but the major one last year was the heart problem and subsequent triple bypass surgery, technically called a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) as referred to by Gerald earlier). Fortunately all those health problems have been mere bumps on the way to the MG. Even the heart operation is now a distant memory and I no longer stop quite as often when climbing a hill. I’m 69.
My bonus points are just over 10% of the total, as my score without the bonuses was almost 900. I don’t really ski and have no mountaineering experience so my activations are rarely in snow.
So my next goal will be to qualify for MG using CW only. I will continue to aim at qualifying every summit I activate on both CW and voice modes. Maybe a band specific MG could be achieved after that. My most frequently used band is 40m. My equipment has been usually an IC703 at 10w, or the FT817 at 5 watts, though as an experiment I qualified a summit using that radio at 0.5w. In the last week, I have experimented with a 40w amplifier and found it does help in these poor HF conditions.
On the chaser side of the ledger the next milestone is super sloth, a few hundred points away.
My advice to folk just starting SOTA is to enjoy the experience, there are many mountains out there waiting for you to visit. The community of SOTA folk are waiting to help you score those points and enjoy those trips.
Thanks to all those chasers who are in my log and no doubt will reappear many times in the future. See you on the next one, further down the log.
73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH
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Well done and it’s good to hear you see the benefits of the surgery.
Well up to South Black Range VK2/ST-006 on 22-jul-2018 you have 592 CW only points. If you want all uniques, CW only then you are at 315 points. These are activations where you have made at least 4 QSOs using CW.
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Thanks Andy,
I thought it was about that, so it will be a while yet, but perhaps 2 years will do it?
73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH
Well done Andrew, thats quite something to achieve. Always good to get you in the log.
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Hi Andrew,
Congratulations on your achievement.
I am slowly editing together the video taken from the Stromlo end, of both the MG 4 contacts as well as the CW 13cm (or was it 23cm?) s2s with 1MCW will share when its done.
W
hi Wade,
thanks, well I was embarrassed to find that i didn’t have my hand key, and I needed it to be eligible to make a SKCC contact with Bill. I turned off the KYR in the 817 and turned the paddle over onto its side, but the resulting morse was pretty awful. But I think we exchanged reports and SKCC numbers satisfactorily.
(SKCC=straight key century club, allows use of hand key, bug or sideswiper only, no electronic keyers)
I won’t be at the club tonight but hopefully will be able to look at the video on 4th Aug.
Andrew
vk1da/2uh
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Might also see Bill literally bleeding to make that contact happen - had to pull his key apart on the summit, in doing so cut himself and was bleeding into the key.
Video now edited and uploaded
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Good video and great to see the new SOTA ops getting into it. Thanks Wade.
Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH
Well done Andrew - I know it is a goal that you have been wanting to achieve for a while now and all the more impressive given the medical issues that you have had to overcome.
I think that we should have beers for all SOTA activations - not just the important ones like your MG activation from the other weekend!
Catch you on them thar hills.
Matt
VK1MA