Apologise to all the chasers who were trying to work me on 40m today from Moel Ellio GW/NW-022. Sadly I posted a spot without checking the SWR, but I had a breakage on the linked dipole. I could hear you all chatting amongst yourself speculating where I was. Apologise for this. I’ll be doing Tryfan, (GW/NW-006), Glyder Fawr (GW/NW-003) and Y Garn (GW/NW-004) tomorrow, so there’s a a total of 26 points up for.grabs.
To get parked anywhere near Tryfan on a bank holiday weekend , when the weather is nice, I’ll be setting off at 8 a.m. (7 UTC). Fitness dependent, I’ll be on Tryfan by 9 a.m. ( 8 UTC). Sorry for the early activation, but I’m only planning on taking 2m so please set your alarms - despite it being a Sunday.
Sorry to hear of your problems Dave but glad we made the s2s before the vswr issue. Frank GW1OFA told me on 2m that you were not having a good morning. I’ll listen for you on Tryfan tomorrow👍
Thanks Alan. I managed to get the S2S with your on 40m O.K, but after that 40m was unusable.i suspect tripping over the invert V in my haste to switch to 10m didn’t really help. Anyway, I’ve been to B&Q in Bangor this evening, to buy a soldering iron, and have repaired (aka bodged).it. I will now take HF with me but I only want to do HF if I have to …
Reminds me of days gone by when my early hour SOTA activations required the attendance in the shack by the regular members of the SOTA Breakfast Club. In comparison a 9 a.m. activation might be considered a bit late… not quite brunch, but certainly about the time for the second coffee (or brew) of the day. I’m sure you’ll be fine.
I think by the time I hit the cafe at Ogwyn cottage tomorrow Robert, 'll be spent for this weekend. Monday will have to be an easy one like Tal Y Fan or the Great Orme. Reaching the MG will have to wait until I’m back in GW/NW land at the end of May.
Thanks Richard, that’s a result. in addition to you, I had a number of chasers tell me they were using the LoRa APRS to track me as I climbed Tryfan, the Bristley ridge and across the Glyders. Sadly it looks like the 500mAh battery is too small to power the Lilygo TT-Beam board for 10 hours, it gave up somewhere on the Glyders.
It worked remarkably well. I’m inclined to think it’s better than standard 2m APRS. 75 miles, 100mW, 70cm not bad at all! Thanks for supplying the digipeater. Hopefully, others will take advantage of this cheap tracker technology. About £50 for a complete system is amazing. Who will develop a Meshtastic self spotting system linked to SOTAwatch?
Hi Richard, now i’m back home I can see it was working a lot better that I expected. - until the battery went flat just as I got on the the Glyders, Almost every ping was digirepeated through G3CWI-2 to various different iGates.
It’ll be interesting to see how active G3CWi-2 is on June 8th for the GW/NW weekend. I’ll be on Cadair Berwyn GW/NW-012.
Hopefully a few others will get interested in these very cheap trackers. Under £50 for what they are is a real bargain. My site is surprisingly good. Must be a couple of dozen summits in range.
Looks OK on the VNA. It claims to be a colinear as Richard says, with 4.5dBi gain. I’ve not had one apart yet to see how it’s constructed or checked it’s performance. VSWR looks fine (1.29) for the LoRa frequency allocated by the RSGB - 439.9125MHz
