I listened for M1EYP/P and, I think I heard him, but working a station who owned the frequency.
I did tune up and down looking but didn’t hear him again.
30 minutes to go, I’ll have another look.
He is monitoring the reflector periodically so may see your post. His last look was just 1 minute ago @M1EYP
Jim
Now after 10pm so I guess he will be descending by now.
So close, and yet so far. HI.
When I hear someone that I want to work but they are on someone else’s frequency, I usually put out a call for them 5kHz up or down. That gives a 50% chance of them tuning across me. Hopefully they won’t have turned their antenna before changing frequency - most people don’t.
73, Gerald G4OIG
Unfortunately it was in a busy area at the time, and I was only going to be putting out a limited ERP. 5 Watts to a small 70cm beam.
I’d hoped that, as I had the beam pointing in the right direction, that I’d be able to locate him again. That proved to be a false hope.
I did hear lots of people in IO93 (not surprising really) plus IO84, JO03 (off the back of the beam) and one station in IO92 (Lutterworth) which was off a side lobe I reckon. I didn’t move the antenna as I just wanted to try to work EYP. Like I say, I’m not a fan of SSB.
Not a fan of SSB ! ! ! … on 70cms it’s a brilliant mode, bettered only by CW. Much more activation time as well in comparison to FM for a given power output. Of course that’s not an issue for a fixed station.
73, Gerald G4OIG
CW is my preferred mode on all bands. Even 3cm…
CW - an even better chance of grabbing Tom’s attention and you’d probably have been able to fit into a gap in the traffic. Hope you catch him another time.
73, Gerald G4OIG
My list of preferred modes, on any band, goes like this…
CW
Erm, did you hear me say CW?
OK, if you insist on something else, maybe SSB, but are you sure you can’t do CW? Even cross mode?
Right, so you don’t have a key and say you don’t understand CW so SSB?
OK, maybe AM, or FM, if you insist. Do you have Digital modes? WSJT would be good, FSK at a push, PSK, if you insist and PSK64 or 125 rather than 31 would be good.
Could we move this to via Aurora, if you are to the North East? Much more likely than Es but MS might be a way to go if not Au. Or 23cm CW, because that seems to work better here than 2M or 70cm, if I am absolutely fair with you.
If not, lets wait for the Es season and 6 or 4M CW would be a good place to start again…
OK, a few things to mention here.
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I was not monitoring SOTAwatch! I was busy in the contest, and it could be considered to be bad form to be doing so as there might be potential for using the internet to set up contest QSOs. My computer was left on at home with SOTAwatch on one of my browser tabs. This is probably what Jim saw.
In the Tuesday night VHF contests, I alternate between running and S+P. So on several periods within each event, you will find me holding my own frequency.
Finally, the Tuesday night events run from 8pm to 10.30pm local time, and I almost always operate for the full 2.5 hours. Therefore I wouldn’t have been descending after 10pm - I was QRV right up until 10.30pm, and only then started to pack away.
FTR, I made a rather disappointing 51 QSOs - 50 on 70cm SSB and 1 on 70cm CW.
Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to running you down, just trying to show that I had tried to work you and had actually heard you at one point.
I did not work any other stations, though I could have ‘worked IO93’ plus a couple of other squares if I’d tried.
Sorry if I implied that you would have been descending at 10pm, my bad, I’ll not bother next time then.
Thanks.
The way this is all going, I seem to remember why I activated 1 summit as an initial summit and then got fed up with SOTA.
Please excuse me, I may not be back for a number of years again…
You seem to have interpreted something negative and certainly unintended here Dave. I am not sure why or how. I was just pointing out a few misconceptions in the thread, namely that it would have been possible to find me calling CQ on my own frequency at some point right up to 10.30pm. Useful to know for future Tuesday night UKACs. Also Jim suggested I was monitoring SOTAwatch - but I was not.
I sometimes hear Tom several times in the course of one of these UKAC’s working other stations on their frequency, but finding his calling frequency is rarely easy, quite why I’m not sure.
Last night I recall hearing only 2 stations in IO83 and both of those were weak and probably using considerably more power than Tom.
From my point of view last night the band seemed to be in poor shape - I only managed to work 3 squares (IO81/82/92) and heard only weak stations in 3 more (IO83/91/93).