70cm SOTA Activity Day - Saturday 4th July 2020

More fun on 70cm.

I re-repaired my feeder, adding sellotape to the process. The result was much more successful. Infinitely more successful in fact. I also reverted to “old technology” for a guying system. Not as high tech, but probably better suited to my M.O.

The Cloud G/SP-015:

70cm FM: 4 QSOs
70cm SSB: 30 QSOs

No less than 4 S2S on 70cm SSB - probably more than the number of 70cm SSB S2S one might expect in a year - in a single activation! The S2S were:

Stuart G1ZAR/P on Shining Tor G/SP-004 - 70cm FM
Adrian G4AZS/P on Long Mynd-Pole Bank G/WB-005 - 70cm SSB
Stuart G1ZAR/P on Shining Tor G/SP-004 - 70cm SSB - 70cm SSB
John GX0OOO/P on Great Whernside G/NP-008 - 70cm SSB
John G4YSS/P on Great Whernside G/NP-008 - 70cm SSB

Somewhat unusually and unexpectedly, I didn’t hear or get S2S with Viki M6BWA/P who was out activating again today.

Went over to Gun and bumped into Richard G3CWI - not literally, 1m+ was maintained. He was on a “cycle” ride and, at the last moment elected not to activate on his handheld. At the time, I assumed it was an act of consideration as I wanted to activate on 70cm at the same time. On reflection, I think it might have been because he used motorised transport (e-bike) to complete the final ascent and would have been outwith the SOTA General Rules - that he wrote.

Gun G/SP-013:

70cm FM - 2 QSOs

Richard and I talked each other into a pint and agreed to meet at the Harrington Arms, Bosley. It was the first post lockdown pub visit for both of us, and proved to be a pleasant experience. Good systems and arrangements had been put in place by the pub, and the Bosley Dale Ale was very good too. Table service, contactless card payment, no drunken people with their arm round your neck shouting loudly into your ear, and having the toilets to yourself. I’m liking this new normal - wouldn’t want to go back to the bad old days!

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Ask yourself that question in mid-winter when you would like to be enjoying the pint by a roaring log fire.

I get your point though!!

I think most establishments are dealing with this proactively and innovatively Barry. As such, I am reasonably confident that practice will have further evolved come mid-winter, so as to enable ale quaffing “in the vicinity of”* a roaring log fire.

*to coin a famous phrase from the SOTA General Rules.

Did you catch Brian G8ADD using his new antenna?

No. Not even from The Wrekin this morning either.

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Hope he’s okay.

You wouldn’t get me on any band on a Monday morning, I have the weekly penance of a Sainsbury’s megashopping trip!

I have managed a total of four chases on 70cm so far, all on the new antenna from home. A trip to the local park netted no chases for my pains, and I won’t be repeating it because it is far too public!

My impression was that Saturday was a real disappointment, there wasn’t much activity spotted, just thirteen summits worldwide. I did not hear any of the WB activations, the rest were just too far (a 4 el yagi won’t bag VK!)

Maybe a silly question to you diehards but how far do you lot get when on 433mhz ??

Hello Allen. Please see the map of my contacts on the Sunday morning contest from G/SP-004.
FT-817 on internal batteries into 17 element, (which was pointing into the wind most of the time.)
The stations showing call signs were other SOTA portables.

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Mind you, my 6-el beam was behaving strangely. Weird directions for most stations. Less than ideal VSWR. Unsurprising as the croc clip fell off again - hoping today’s repair is a case of third time lucky! I jammed the coax core into the plastic screw housing the driven element. A more significant problem was the director element snapping in half - that won’t have helped the beam to behave like a beam…

Wide awake at 3.10am BST this morning so another nice early start out. Despite commencing walking before 6am there was a lot of people on the hill at that time. No problems with distancing of course, as the route up The Wrekin G/WB-010 is a very wide track.

While the early hour didn’t make the hill quiet, it did make the bands quiet. It was a trickle of contacts - enough to qualify and add more unique calls to the Challenge score.

Return home via Halfords to invest in some croc clips, wire strippers and insulation tape. Feeder repaired at home - again. Found that I still had some pieces of an old 3-el 2m SOTA Beam left, so I cut one down to size to replace the 70cm director, and then went into a long battle getting the plastic screw housing onto it!

All done, and should be put to the test on The Cloud this evening.

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Saturday was a remarkable success Brian. I made a big stack of 70cm contacts including quite a few S2S. Given the most unpleasantly unseasonal wx on Saturday, I think the activity held up better than I expected. Are you sure you’ve checked that coax?

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Give over, Tom! Brand new coax on the new beam, of course.

It is interesting to compare your S2S lists with the Spots for Saturday, besides yourself there was M6BWA on WB016, 017. 011 and 008, G4AZS on WB007, M0JLA on WB017 and M0OAT on SP017. G1ZAR seems to have not been spotted and you only missed a couple!

I missed out on the lower WB summits, probably because I have local higher ground to the west.

Saturday was good for me, a nice few contacts including some S2S, the hastily bodged mounting for the 10 element back half of my old Tonna Yagi worked well, and I picked a pound (half a Kilo) of Wimberries on the way down, more than enough to make a pie when I got home :smile:

I went for 45 degree slant polarisation, as discussed in an earlier thread. It seemed to work well, and also facilitated a simple and robust mount for a square section boom (a good register in a V groove).
It held up well during the contest on Sunday morning too. Happily, the wind gave it a default heading of east-ish, which was quite useful. Holding it to point north or south was quite an effort!

Thanks to all who chased me

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Nice one Steve…I realize now why I never heard any of you was because you were using beams.

73 de 2E0AGB Allen

And he (Tom) even had time to Chase oops I meant make tarts

That’s some vista is that

After getting home from The Wrekin G/WB-010, Marianne and Liam were getting out of bed, and preparing to go walking in the Goyt Valley. I interrogated Marianne about her proposed route, and upon discovering that it would pass over Shining Tor G/SP-004, I invited myself along.

This route is a 9 mile circular starting and finishing at the Cat & Fiddle. The walk goes down to Derbyshire Bridge then follows right down the beautiful Goyt Valley to Errwood Reservoir before rising up to Pym Chair. At that point, the road is left and a mostly flagged path is taken right up to the SOTA summit, before the familar descent back to the Cat & Fiddle pub.

7 QSOs were made, 5 on 70cm FM and 2 on 2m FM. This was just on the handheld, as setting up and bedding down with portable radio doesn’t really work with walks with the XYL (I have discovered).

Immedaitely after getting back to Macclesfield, I skipped my evening meal in order to go straight back out again, this time to The Cloud G/SP-015. Now alone, I felt more comfortable setting up the FT-817 with the 6-el beam repaired that morning, and the coax feeder, also repaired that morning. I’m happy to report that both repairs were good.

It was now a beautiful sunny evening, and the activation was enjoyable. I made 34 QSOs, all on 70cm FM - a pleasing return for just over an hour’s operating.

Finally I went over to Gun G/SP-013 for the 4th activation of the day. I was now extremely tired after the very early start and all the walking, so reverted to handheld-only. Four QSOs were made on 70cm FM, pleasingly including one new one for the Challenge.

I slept well last night! Most photos will appear on my website soon.

I have been called many things :wink: but not sure whether I am a ‘diehard’ - but I do rather specialise in operating SOTA on 70cm fm on 5w from a VX-7R handy plumbed into a dipole up about 2m. Looking at my rather chaotic records I have a clutch of s2s around 160km with the best by far from Peel Fell (G/SB-004) on the Scottish border to Arenig Fawr (GW-NW-011) a distance of 274km. This was a good result even for 2m fm but my record so far on 144MHz is 309km when operating on the local Ysgyryd Fawr GW/SW-016 when I was surprised to hear Cringle Moor G/TW-002 in the Yorkshire Wolds. I also heard France but they didn’t reply!

I didn’t achieve such distances during this week of the 70cm SOTA challenge but we did get quite a lot of contacts from over the Severn (which we could just see) from the 3 small SW summits yesterday which was a pleasant surprise. Log to follow when I can decipher it (rather wet and windy on the Sugar Loaf GW/SW-011 outside Abergavenny) but it was lovely to be allowed back into Wales.
73 Vikii M6BWA

Wow well done Vicki… I was listening out for you and Rod but unfortunately couldn’t hear you on this occasion due to local noise…Shame as you and Rod normally blast through to here. Anyways give my regards to Rod please Best 73

Mr pedantic here Viki. Cringle Moor is in the Cleveland hills some 50 miles North of the Yorkshire Wolds. :thinking:

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Ok, there was a lift on at the time. … With this small 3 ele DH3ZK logperiodic, from Fair Snape Fell G/SP-007, I worked into Holland, Belgium, across Germany and finally into Poland.

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