Activation of G/DC-003
Well to start arrived nice and early about 06:00 utc. Sun’s out and it’s a little chilly in that NE breeze, So far so good. Broke out the gear of the car and short walk to the summit site on Kitt hill and as setting up notice a pretty major problem with me support lines tangled up big time. After 20 minutes threw it on ground and mounted the 8m pole onto the trig point TP-4256 in SX-37 and tried it on via the mangled cord. So decided to opt for the 1/4w 40mb vertical wire and got it quickly set up as the inverted L 1/2w 40mb wire could not go up due to lack of support from the triangular support lines which were in a mess. Yet managed to get it up right and stable and unpacked the radio gear on MFJ tuner 949D and the Trio 120V 10w and an standard mike and the PSU unit. A portable power station (Not engine but battery’s unit).
After all of this antenna was still up right to my surprise and got around to tuning in 20m with well ease down to it’s lowest SWR I good get. So low it was off the scale . Then took me mobile and placed myself on the spot page. And my first contact made me simle, big time after all that hassle of setting up was a very loud VK5PAS Paul. Was so surprised and happy to talk with Paul my very first contact on me new portable set up and as an activator. This was followed by me first S2S with Ed DD5LP/p on DL/AL-170. So a flying start it took off being placed on the watch spot page and CQ pages they came in steady stream from all over Europe including EU and RV areas also. Another good flow of stations was well worked and signal’s till it quietened down a little later,s.
Time to spot oneself on 10m 28470. Band was very dull and nothing heard on freq or nearby after getting home me spot had failed. Can see why now no one heard let alone poor Es on 10m. Next move was to 40m spotted self again but again it failed for some unknown reason no return calls on 7.131. Yet did hear a lot of Spanish, Italian, French. Germans and Italians. No UK stations heard at across 40m not even on the WAB again German stations chatting away . But did chat to a Gent nr Paris in a field whom also portable on 7.140.
So back to 20m and have a flick around first station I come across is a VK6 calling out on LP no joy getting back to him. But further flicking round resulted in another S2S from F/AM-733 ( 5 Watt Sota ) and SV/MC-042.
Then the NE breeze kicked in and turned chilly after sun disappeared behind the clouds and decided I have had a good day time to pack up to which did not take long and by 0930hrs back home as Kit hill only 20min drive from here. WX depending properly go back again see if I can get few more local stations on 40m and also sort out me support cords with better gear and get that Inverted L up and running. But one thing I did notice straight away on how quiet the noise level was well down compared to here at home. Thinks move me house up there don’t think the National trust will like that. But from that was a good outing, happy with results and only visitors were one black Labrador and couple grey hounds LOL
SO MADE 26 CONTACTS
1 VK CONTACT yesssssss
3 S2S CONTACTS
M3FEH/p on G/DC-003 WAB-SX-37 and TP-4256
Ok how does the S2S points work then
Does that not count towards your activator points
Or are these sep point system as like in chaser points and activator points
Well done Karl,
You are now seeing the fruits of your antenna construction work over the last few weeks. Glad you made it out today and glad we could have an official S2S contact as well as a bit of a chat.
Log is entered, I’ll be publishing my report on Zweiselberg to my blog at dd5lp.com as usual in the next few days but it was an enjoyable trip out.
Karl, very well done on your 1st activation. I hope you are now planning the next one!
Activating and chasing are separate activities. For complex “this is how the software was written” reasons, S2S contacts are treated as an extension of chasing. When you work an S2S contact and log it, it gets added to the S2S logs and also chaser logs. So logging an S2S contact will get you S2S points and chaser points. If you look in your chaser and S2S logs you will see the same contacts but they get scored differently.
Karl, great report, had me laughing out loud, and then a big gasp to read that your first contact was a VK! Congratulations on your first activation of many…
Its OK Karl, its not as obvious as you think. Some systems prefer numbers without the decimal point.You have done really well, see if you can get onto the next one now and complete a region. One of the great things about SOTA is that you can achieve these milestones in a progressive way.
Great photos Karl - wondered what kit hill and the views looked like. I was there at the beginning of May and couldn’t see more than 20 feet on low wet cloud.
Congratulations. You got a good result. I’ve done a reasonable number of activations and yesterday was the first one I’ve had a tangle. A bad one. They happen. We just need to eliminate or minimise the possibility of such problems for the next times.
