Already checked out your score for the HB15SOTA diploma? [Part 3]

Thank you Eric for the message.
I very very very well know that Jürg and Bruno have done superhuman efforts to make the HB15SOTA Edelweiss possible for me. I will never forget that, he is a true friend.
QRM or not It was impossible to hear him even not the weakest morse modulated noise.I went down to 50 Hz Filter, 100 Hz, Audio peak filter, to no avail.
a 3m long whip antenna is no Arecibo ear.

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Patrick,

There is certainly reason to hope, there may still be someone with a little more transmission power, which you will then be able to hear. So continue to keep eyes and ears open, hi.

73 gl, Heinz

Dear all

:four_leaf_clover: Many thanks to Ken @G0FEX for your kind words of appreciation for the HB15SOTA programme 2020/2021 and the related action of all our HB9ers activating summits for it in the last edition of “SOTA Quarterly News” – noted and well appreciated!

And yes, the last 3 days are ahead of us . . . more cloudy or rainy today Thursday and tomorrow
Friday and better forecasts for last day Saturday, May 8, 2021. Any needs? Smile . . . some difficult cantons have been delivered now several times. And any last activations for the programme are depending on the availability of operators and favorable external conditions. Snow has not yet receeded enough for easier access in most parts of the real mountains.

So looking forward to a last bunch of adventures with HB15SOTA and you, the counterparties, and bagging them for good souvenirs!

Enjoy and vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ

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In case somebody is still interested in canton Bern (BE) for HB15SOTA, I added an alert for tomorrow at 10:30z for HB/BE-012 (Montagne de Moutier).

Fun fact: end of March 2021, the people of Moutier voted with nearly 55% Yes to switch from canton Bern to canton Jura, which will take place beginning of 2026. Therefore I assume, in less than five years, canton Jura will gain this SOTA summit and canton Bern will loose it.

Anyways, canton Bern by then will still have many more summits than canton Jura and many difficult BE-summits will stay inactivated.

73 Stephan

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Dear Activators,

I will look for S2S with HB/AG, AR, NE, OW, SH (this one I know will be on air), SZ, TI, GR. NW, SO & UR.
I need two of them :smiley:
See you tomorrow :wink:

73, Jarek

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Hi Jarek

Seems that you’re the lucky guy tomorrow Saturday. I’ll be on Brandegg, HB/UR-074, from about 0800z.

Hopin’ to meet you all for our last HB15 day!

Vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ

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Hi Markus,
Thank you very much for your message, I will keep my ears opened :wink:
73, Jarek

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Thank you Tom HB9DPR for making it possible for me to complete the HB15SOTA Edelweiss award.
After the failure to complete HB15SOTA Edelweiss on Tuesday I lost all hope.
But Tom made it possible today on the last possible day to complete the HB15SOTA top level.
Thank you again, many many thanks to all activators in the past year for their phantastik efforts to make HB15SOTA such a fine succes.
73 Patrick ON4BCA

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… for these still looking for Canton HB/GL:

Manuel HB9DQM is on HB/GL-039 just now what is certainly your last chance. See if you can catch him!

Vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ

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Markus and Tom HB9DPR - many thanks, we did it :smiley:
S2S Enzian gives me big satisfaction, especially that I could do it during weekends only !

Many many thanks & all the best for all Activators worked in this long term event.

73, Jarek

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Dear all

The activations of Stefan HB9HCS yesterday, in canton Fribourg HB/FR brought the jubilee period “15 years HB9SOTA club” to an on-air end. HB15 is history now, thanks to all participating, it was fun. I will miss it, definitively!

Looking through my own HB15SOTA activations over the last 12 months provides some statistics: 2,783 contacts, 60 activations and 52 summits from all 24 cantons. Most of the traffic was SSB or FM, and some FT8 tests. I had 703 different on-air partners, whereof HB9DHA most frequent with 90 QSOs. ODX was @ZL1TM with 2 contacts. Thanks to you all!

So who is in my “Who’s who”?

Partner callsign HB15 contacts
HB9DHA 90
EA2DT 61
G0FEX 47
G4WSB 47
EA2CKX 46
IW3AGO 45
SP9AMH 44
HB9AGH 43
SA4BLM 43
DJ5AV 40
S57ILF 39
EA1DHB 38
F5JKK 31
F4WBN 30
F5LKW 29
SM5LNE 28
2E0ESY 26
SV1RVJ 26
HB9CYV 25
ON7ZM 25
EA7GV 24
OM1AX 24
M0MDA 23
ON4CB 23
IK2LEY 22
EA3EBJ 21
GM7NZI 20
HB9GUX 20
PA0B 19
G4OBK 18
HB9DDZ 18
OK2PDT 18
SM4CJM 18
HB9DBM 17
OE6GND 17
SV2OXS 17
SV2RUJ 17
DL8DXL 16
HB9CLT 16
HB9DQM 16
2E0AGB 15
DL3TU 15
G0RQL 15
HB9FUE 15
IN3ADF 15
DG1NPM 14
G4AFI 14
HB9MKV 14
OH3GZ 14
SP9TKW 14
SQ9MDF 14
SV3IEG 14
EU2MM 13
HB9BHW 13
HB9CDH 13
HB9EVF 13
HB9HBV 13
HB9JOE 12
HB9BIN 11
HB9CGA 11
HB9CRY 11
HB9ELZ 11
HB9HBU 11
HB9LAN 11
S56RPJ 11
UW8SM 11
DJ9BX 10
DL6FBK 10
DM3FAM 10
EA2CE 10
HB3XTZ 10
HB9BQU 10
HB9GKR 10
MM0XPZ 10
OE6STD 10
SV2SOQ 10

Please assume that my HB15 fellows feel in a similar way.

Our national and cantonal corona restrictions allowed us to travel as long as we observed the various regulations. These could vary in quantity and details even locally. Remembering here nearly empty trains or gondolas, but long queues on these very few activations in ski areas of GL, GR and VS. Own responsibility with keeping the distance, wearing the mask and applying hand disinfection were key.

Due to the precautionary measures, I was not sick at all for over a year now apart from some headache now and then. Doing a SOTA summit from time to time provided a good distance to the home office retreat resp. isolation and a simple health training as long as sports facilities were closed. Providing SOTA greetings in difficult times became more important and was appreciated in general, especially for those locked at home by their regulations. “Stay healthy” was among the most frequent wishes at the end of a QSO beside “73!” and “Happy SOTA” or “Enjoy!”. Yes, enjoying became more demanding.

All HB15 fun would not have been possible without our independent local HB9SOTA club providing structures for (real and now virtual) meetings with fellows and the workforce to maintain the HB9 summit infrastructure. This prevents the dependency from individual stand-alone solitaires and allows distributing the workload of the day-by-day association management on several shoulders. And yes, as said before, it is a platform for meeting, not only for the on-air QSOs. It was this social base to SOTA in HB9 celebrating 15 years.

Take a look on the alerts of today, i.e. day + 1. There is quite a long list here for HB9. Today is mother’s day, but always time for an ear to the bands and those out on the summits. There is still that much to be seen, to be discovered and to be brought to those at home or on other summits. I’m looking forward to it – so continue to enjoy! :slight_smile:

Vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ

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Markus @HB9DIZ and all other OPs from HB15SOTA. Thank you all for the QSOs during the HB15SOTA event. It was fun to hear you all for such a long time - I think we will miss the call HB15SOTA for the time being.

73 Marcel DM3FAM

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Thanks to the organizers and special thanks to all the operators of HB15SOTA. It was big fun chasing you! Looking very much forward to HB20SOTA in a few years!

73 Heinz, OE5EEP

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… a big “thank you” to the whole HB9SOTA-gang for this great idea! It was so much fun. I hope you enjoyed activating as much as I enjoyed chasing after the missing cantons.

@hb9diz, Markus, this is an incredible achievement! It was written here before that it wasn’t always easy and the weather wasn’t always activator-friendly :wink:
Congrats on reaching your personal goal! Now is the time to celebrate :tada: :birthday: :champagne:
Have fun! 73,
Roman

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Let me join the choir of appraisal and gratitude to the HB15SOTA team for their effort. Special thanks to the OM’s who issued alerts by e-mail about activations in the two cantons I needed for the award and indeed I succeeded in getting the diploma.

Chasing for HB15SOTA has been great fun and has taught me a lot about HB9 and the cantons.

I have also become aware of the HB9SOTA Lowland-Summit-Diploma and have at present chased 154 of the 176 summits so chasing is still going on.

Many thanks and 73 from

OZ6ABZ Jens

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Dear all

The HB15 game is over, and I was on air today with HB9DIZ/p again after long time – last time was on November 29, 2020, hi.

See Jürg’s final report on 18,018 QSOs with HB15SOTA in his separate message. Enjoy looking back there!

Vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ

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Hi Markus, @HB9DIZ

Again many thanks to all stations that made this event possible :+1:

Perhaps to spice up the coming weeks, it would be good to recall the existence of the Lowland award :
https://hb9sota.ch/lowland-summit-award/

I allow myself to do some publicity

Started the 01/01/2013, you will be surprised how many summits you need to get this award, very nice in this case :yum:

73, Éric

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Hi,
I know the Lowland award very well. My standing at present: 94chased all with 5w qrp and 3m long whip antenna.
What I dream of is: triple Edelweiss award (Lowland , HB9SOTA, HB15SOTA)+ 10000 SOTA Chaser points.
I now have double Edelweiss and approaching 2000 SOTA chaser points.

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I would also like to thank all those involved with the HB15 OTA project. It was lovely to speak to you all and I enjoyed it very much. My only regret was that I failed by about six cantons , I think those were on CW but with conditions being as they have been I just wasn’t hearing the CW well enough to finish my quest, but never mind it was still good and I look forward to the Lowland one. Markus I am one of the dumb ones as I thought that Switzerland was all mountains and didn’t realize there was so much lowland, having never been. The photos were beautiful.

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Hi Eric,
Thank you for encouraging me to check :wink:

73, Jarek

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