2017 ON SOTA Winter Activation Day

Slowly we are getting towards the end of our 10-year ON association celebration year. A lot of special 10-year ON association awards have already been issued 10 years ON association celebration awards.
In order to end this great year I propose we do it with a big bang: The first ON-SOTA-winter activation day on Sunday 17 December 2017!

You are kindly invited to participate by activating, chasing and making summit-2-summit contacts as much as you can with the focus on Belgian SOTA-summits.

This day will be the ideal opportunity to:

  • activate those missing ON summits to get the 10-year ON association activator award
  • chase those missing ON summits to get the 10-year ON association chaser award
  • go for the 10-year ON association complete award
  • provide the necessary contacts for international SOTA chasers so that they can get the 10-year ON association chaser award
  • make ON summit2summit contacts on 2m
  • activate in rain, snow but most probably in sunshine …
  • have a lot of SOTA-fun!

Remember that you can get a 3-point winter bonus for ON SOTA summits with 6 or 8 points … even if you already have activated that summit during the summer!

73, Peter – ON4UP
ON SOTA association manager

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Dr OM Peter,
Depending on the road conditions, safety first, I hope to activate the Pottelberg. Rig KX1 and antenna W3EDP.
I will start on 80 m so also possibilities for ON S2S.
73 de geert pa7zee

Hi Peter,

Unhapilly I’m working at the date …

For the award , is it necessary to activate all the summit during 2017 ?

73, ON3JMV

Bonjour Jean-Michel,

For the 10 year ON association activator award, you have to activate 10 different ON summits in 2017.

73, Peter

I think I may say that the ON SOTA winter activation day was a success. Despite the bad weather forecast and the tricky road conditions at some places, 8 different activators were spotted on several ON summits: thanks ON4FI, ON4KCY, ON5SWA, ON5XX, ON9CBQ, PA7ZEE and PA9CW!

Also a big thank you to to all chasers. Without you, this day would not have been possible.

The special 10-year ON association awards can be requested until 31 March 2018. 10 years ON association celebration awards

73, Peter ON4UP

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Yes in my experience it was a success. ‘My summit’ was ON/ON-027 Pottelberg where I was for the first time. And yes from my home near Amsterdam to this summit it was sometimes rather slippery. And yes it was just above zero degrees C with a little sunshine. But there was minutes long a flute concert when my call appeared on the Spot list. This activation made my ON list complete.
May I suggest to the MT that there will be a yearly Global SOTA Winter Activation Day?
Merry Christmas to you all!

Then we should first define the date for the Global Winter, hi.
In addition, the conditions at sea level and in the Alps are very different, which would further complicate an overlap of the QRV times (of interest to the activators).
The most practical solution would probably be SOTA Winter Days at national/regional level as they already exist in some countries.

I just checked my logbook, I have chased all the ON summits this year except for ON-021 and ON-028. There is still a couple of weeks to go…:grinning:

You only need to chase 10 ON summits in 2017 to claim the award Brian.

I think Brian is excited by the thought of chasing all the ON summits in one calendar year.

:heart: :grin: :thumbsup:

I was interested in this event but it was raining at my QTH pretty much the whole day. I don’t have a shack so I’m forced to operate outside. I also wanted to try and work OH9SCL and OJ9X, the Christmas stations from Finland. If the weather is better this week, hopefully I’ll manage to work the Finnish stations.

Glad to hear the ON winter activation day was considered a success, well done to the activators involved.

73, Colin
"#fairweatherchaser"

Exactly so, Andy! After getting my SS Award I decided that instead of chasing ever higher scores I would work towards Association completions, trying to chase all the summits in an Association - a goal that is a lot harder than it sounds, even for the smaller Associations! In the case of ON I decided to try and complete all the ON summits in one year. Of course this has an effect on my scoring rate - if I have a choice between chasing an activation of a ten point summit that I have worked before or a unique one point summit, I go for the one point summit.

Nice personal challenge Brian. ON-021 is often activated; it was so last Sunday. ON-028 is the most difficult ON summit to activate… Dry conditions are strongly advised.

It was a nice day. I activated 5 summits instead of 6, because of the snow.
It was big fun. My movie is on it’s way…

Thanks all chasers. 73 Tonnie, de PA9CW