W7A 10-point s2s Madness day Sept 30th

WU7H and I will be activating from W7W for S2S Madness. Looking forward to it!

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On the road in a few minutes…heading North to s2s central!

C U from the top!

73

Pete

Hi all,
Outstanding event; thanks for putting it together, Pete. Maybe an annual event?

Just back home, and will take some time to de-compress!

Best, Ken & Kay

What a great time! K6HPX… Ken it was a pleasure to finally chase you. You are in the majority of my logs. Glad to have an S2S with you.

I managed to get 19 S2S contacts from the lowly 6 pt. summit I was on with K7III. It truly was madness!

I hope this becomes an annual event. Thanks W7A and everyone who activated Today!

-Josh

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Thanks for organizing this event, Pete. Lots of activity. I worked 9 of the W7A’s among my 20 overall chaser QSOs. Conditions were flaky, which added to the fun. 73, Don AC7P

This is the first time I’ve competed in an S2S pile up. No kidding, s2s pile ups…

When I first set up on W4V/HB-036 today I heard N3SW on W3/PD-007 call CQ, so I dumped in my puny lil “s2s” and heard at least 3 other s2s too. I knew it was a sign of things to come.

I managed 10 S2S QSOs. The whole US pretty well represented.

Thanks everyone.

Chuck K4QS

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I knew this would be an amazing event before I left the house - and it was! Colorado is located well, with easy propagation to Arizona, plus not too far from both coasts, etc.

Yes, there were S2S pileups - sometimes several calling me - as well as others I listened to working other activators. I didn’t use a smart phone or any device to see spots - just tuned around a lot, and listened to the action, as well as called CQ on the 60-40-30-30 meter bands more than usual. There were about as many contacts resulting from CQ sessions as from hunting and listening. It was ever-changing, incredibly fascinating, and quite busy!

I’m sure I missed as many S2S contacts as I made. This is the nature of the game. When you run a CQ session, you miss others doing the same thing! I never even listened to HF SSB! Just HF CW.

There were several S2S callers who were so light I could just barely hear them calling - and I’m sorry I couldn’t copy all of them - even though I was on a very good summit with a high antenna, with low noise on 60-20M. The bands were long, but very good for me. 60, 40, and 30M worked into AZ. 20M was good for longer paths.

From 1535Z to 1902Z, about 3-1/2 hours, I made 31 S2S contacts,.of which 26 were unique summits, not second operators or other bands. There were 82 contacts, including several dupes and multiple bands, etc. The numerous chasers were very busy as well as all the activators, and I did my best to please everyone.

Thank you to the many chasers who stood by quietly while I made many S2S contacts in strings, one after the other. I’d say the chasers did quite well from what I heard!

Thanks to the many activators who did such great jobs with their gear that the S2S contacts were easy and fast! I’ve never heard so many “professional” activators in one session!

Thank you to WA7JTM and others for making this happen so smoothly!

Hopefully this will become an annual event - it was a high point in my SOTA trail!

73

KX0R
George (Carey)

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Looks like we had 29 Activators on 25 different ARIZONA 10-point summits yesterday…:grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning:

I am glad everyone seemed to enjoy the W7A s2s 10-point Madness event. It sure was nuts over here. I am tabulating some results/stats as the logs come in. It should be interesting to look at.

Thanks to everyone who was involved, Activators and Chasers. A special thanks to the Arizona Activators who made this event happen! Great job by everyone…

C u all at the GOAT celebration for N7LP and K7JFD sometime soon!!!

73

Pete

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Thanks Pete for putting this all together, it was a fantastic day on the mountains of Arizona. I had a great time hanging out on 20 Meters SSB while Jeff N7JH took on 40 on SSB and CW. Have not counted up the total yet but I had a great time.

Looking forward to doing this again next year

73

Pete you really created an amazing event, THANK YOU!

This was the windiest activation I have ever done, in fact the wind was so strong above the treeline that it literally blew me over once, and during the final mile of my hike, I must have looked like a drunk as I stumbled my way up the rocky trail along the ridgeline. It was 41F at the top (the summit of W7A/AE-001, Humphreys Peak is at 12,633 feet), and due to the wind, I had to keep my inverted vee so low that the ends were on the ground. The wind sounded like a continuously running jet engine the entire time I was up there. I was shaking from the cold, I wore gloves with hand warmers inside and I’m sure my code wasn’t too clean. But the views were spectacular, and once I was set up the fun began!

I worked 45 S2S QSO’s, including 23 Arizona summits (I only missed W7A/PE-002) and 15 others - some of them with two ops, or on more than one band. I made 79 total contacts on 2m plus all HF bands 10m through 60m. My furthest 2m QSO, using a 5-watt HT and Arrow 3-el beam, was 150 miles, and furthest 10m ground wave QSO was 210 miles. This was the first time ever that the majority of my QSO’s were S2S, and my S2S total jumped up 315 points by the time I was done entering them all.

The 10.2 mile round trip hike, which I started at dawn, took me a bit under 3 hours going up, and a bit over 2 hours coming down. Just as I reached my car the rain began. Then a 5 hour drive home…so it was a very long day, but without a doubt one of the most fun SOTA activations I have ever done!

Thanks to all the Activators and Chasers who made this one a special day for the SOTA history books.

73, Keith KR7RK

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:smile: :+1::smile: :+1::smile: :+1::smile: :+1::smile: :+1::smile: :+1::smile: :+1:

FYI,

I am compiling some statistics (a spreadsheet) on the s2s Madness event. So far there are three stations that made over 40 s2s contacts in this event so far…49, 46, and 45 s2s contacts for those stations.

I am still waiting for a few more logs to come in, so that number may grow.

Pete
WA7JTM

An unqualified success! I was supposed to go to work, but went in late. Sure glad I did. I worked 14 W7A activators and 10 more outside the state for a great day chasing…205 points!

Thank for the effort to put this all together.

CU OTA!

73, Larry

Very nice Larry!

Looks like many ops scored lots of s2s points…which was sort of the idea Hi Hi. I am glad to see so many DX stations made lots of s2s contacts with us.

Looks like we had 33 operators on 25 different 10 point summits. So far the W7A ops have submitted 844 10-Point MADNESS contacts with 420 of them being s2s contacts.

There are still eight W7A logs that have not been submitted to the data base, and some of them should be pretty sizeable.

Anyhow…glad everyone had fun…

At some point I will submit Final results from our end.

tnx

Pete

It sure sounds like a blast! I am so jealous that I couldn’t make it. I got out of the house about 5:30 AM PT and was on the mid Cascades summit in about 2 hours (1430Z). It was raining, but my wife and I set up to operate. I had an 88’ inverted Vee doublet up about 25’ to 30’ broadside to the SE and pointing nicely down the rocky cliff. I was looking forward to the rain stopping as NOAA had predicted and working lots of S2S summits. However, the rain never let up over the next couple of hours. I tried to rig up an umbrella and tarp cover to get on the air, but that kept collapsing, letting the rain into my make shift structure. It was no fun - water was leaking into my KX-3, the paddle contacts were sporadically shorting and the ink in my log was running. Several brief openings teased us into continuing with the hope of the rain stopping. Finally, my wife held the small umbrella over my operating position while I made 5 QSOs in about 15 minutes. We packed up and headed back down the mountain. Hopefully next time will go better. I may need to make a better portable shelter. 73, Phil, NS7P

Hello SOTA fans…

I attached a spreadsheet for the W7A 10-POINT S2S MADNESS event held on Sept 30th showing how everyone did in the event to the North America SOTA page (the .IO site, not on Yahoo).

We had 33 operators on 24 different 10-point Arizona summits that day.

We made over 1100 contacts and over 53% of all contacts made were s2s contacts.

A number of Arizona Activators scored over 200 s2s points, and a few scored over 300 s2s points in one day!

We also had quite a few out of state chasers who worked at least 10 W7A ten point summits.

Thanks to everyone to participated, Activators and Chasers!!!

We may just have to do this again next September…30+ ten pointers on Sunday next year anyone?

73

Pete
WA7JTM
W7A Association Manager

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