6m FT8 tonight

Activation Reports Pre-Planning
21

That’s not strictly true Andy. By looking down the list of conversations you can find frequencies that participants - and new squares - are operating on. Sometimes this information appears in the comment “Pse try 50.193” - which is fine, or sometimes a user might append their callsign with their working frequency - I don’t think this is permitted, but it happens, and by not looking you are putting yourself at a disadvantage to those that do!

It’s a bit of an irritation TBH, but generally I find my time is more productively spent searching through the frequencies than searching through the KST chat messages. But if it goes really quiet in the last half hour, it’s worth a look to see if there’s any info on where I might find a new square.

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Thursday 11th April 2019 - The Cloud G/SP-015

I afraid to say I suffered several more “preparation fails” for this one, but relieved to say I “got away” with all of them!

Fail one was just after picking up fish and chips for tea, for Jimmy, Liam and myself. The bag fell over in the car and 1.5 pots of curry sauce emptied themselves. Fortunately, this was all contained within a clean paper bag; it could have been much worse!

Fail two was when I pulled the SB6 out of the bag and saw that it was damaged - a wire had broken off an acrylic insulator. I’d broken this last month and forgotten completely about it. I cobbled together a makeshift repair, tying the end of the wire (driven element) around a small cable tie loop, then connecting that via a longer cable tie to the rest of the antenna. It all worked, the antenna performed well and the VSWR was good.

Fail three was when I went to turn on my Windows 10 tablet (for WSJT-X for the MGM activity contest 1800-1855z) - but discovered that it was already turned on! That meant that since I put it into my car two days ago, after recharging it, it had been switched on - doh! Anyway, I pleased to say it still had more than enough juice to last the contest period of 55 minutes.

In the 6m MGMAC, I operated exclusively on FT8 and made 16 QSOs into squares IO64, 70, 82, 83, 91, 93, 94 & JO02.

In the 6m UKAC, I operated exclusively on SSB and made 67 QSOs into squares IO64, 71, 74, 75, 80, 81, 82, 83, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94 & JO01.

The last half hour was hard work as it was bitterly cold up there.

1 Like
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Tom,

You could consider the power options in the windows control panel to automatically hibernate the tablet after a selectable period of inactivity. If hibernate is not in the options list, you can enable it (google will find you the command to do this). After doing that, your windows tablet won’t give you that flat battery problem.
I recommend hibernate over “sleep”, mostly.
73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH

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Thanks, I’ll check that out. As it was, it still had >70% charge despite being switched on for two days, and lasted the contest part of the activation easily.

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Well we’ll try again tonight. I’m really sure everything is in the car this time… (FLW).

6m tonight - FT8 1800-1855z then CW/SSB 1900-2130z.

Hoping for plenty of other activators out for S2S opportunities (the wx is FB), plenty of chasers looking for 6m SOTA, and some nice enhanced conditions.

1 Like
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i will listen 50.313 and which QRG for CW --> 50.090 ?
73 Roger

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I’m QRV from home, with an indoor dipole !
But have already worked two stations … Karel, ON4FI, our top chaser :wink:
and G3YDY
Not heard/seen M1EYP yet …
Luc ON7DQ

2 Likes
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Only F5JKK and IK3GHR …

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