What I meant is, that there is no certainty in a band opening for 15m. You make a few calls to find out if 15m is any good this day and you do not get picked up by any skimmer. Finally, just when you are about to QSY, you get through to a skimmer and produce a “late” spot. This situation might be worsened by skimmers cycling from band to band.
The situation is different on 60, 40, 30 and 20m. If you do not produce a spot within a few minutes, then something is broken.
Hi Guru,
What you write, well it strenghtens what I think, that you are an exceptional good activator, last but not least because you are aware about what is going on at the end of the chaser and use that knowledge to advance your operational technique as an activator.
Vy 73
ON4BCA QRP SOTA chaser
Hello Guru
I use to let him running.
Agur
André
Are some activators alerting for too many bands? With the winter weather they can’t hang around for long so never give a band much chance. I usually activate 40m and 20m cw, then 2m fm, in that order. When I’m cold I feel the third band is too much.
Richard
Possible Richard. The days are short now and the HF bands are more awake so you can’t whizz through 30/20m anymore. Everytime it’s a wall of chasers, which is great but means you can’t do LF and HF SSB and CW. The WX hasn’t been wonderful my last 2 activations and sitting just out of the main wind in the sun today it was still too cold to use all the available light and activate. Hence 20m CW and a quick toe-in-the-water on 17m CW. With a -10C windchill even that was too long TBH.
I feel that, too. Alerting for several bands, that is several times that QSO time is lost changing frequency, possibly re-setting antennas and tuning up, searching for a suitable frequency and then attracting chasers. This strikes me as inefficient use of summit time, compounded if the activator wants to use two or more modes, too.
Thanks, Patrick, for the flowers 
It’s very important being able to get oneself into the other’s shoes. In Spanish we say getting into the other’s skin, but the meanning is clear. That’s empathy and that’s why I highly recommend chasing AND activating to anyone playing SOTA. That’s the best way to fully understand how things go at both sides of the court.
73,
Guru
Hi Andy,
It was great chasing you again today on 20m CW. With my 3 elements beam right towards your location, you were putting a very good signal S9.
Later I followed you to 17m and I wasn’t copying you at all on my broadband inverted vee folded dipole, which is very much in the wrong orientation to your location, i.e. ends pointing about 350º (North-NorthWest) and about 170º (South-SouthEast).
The eagerness (“ANSIA”) to keep activating other bands and modes is something common to all of us enjoying ham radio operation, but the hypothermia under extreme cold is a real threat and at -10º windchill, keeping it short is the smartest move.
I hope the repeated balanced charge of your LiFePo4 battery will finally render the 4 cells back to very similar or even identical voltage.
73,
Guru
The pack worked fine in the cold. I’ll have a look later at what each cell is showing. It was obviously cold as my freshly charged camera battery was showing a lower capacity but that is back now it has warmed up.
In fact I could only manage 50mins before I gave up because of the windchill. It was a brilliant sunny day but it was starting to cloud up and just too exhausting, even in the lee of the wind. Also the road from the car park to the main road had lots of ice at the bottom of a slope at a 90deg left turn. Having to negotiate it on the way home was weighing on my mind especially as my car (which is 4wd) did spin the wheels and the traction light flashed when ascending the hill. As it was it hadn’t melted and I was able to “tip-toe” around. I didn’t need winter tyres but studded tyres!
Worked on 20m :DL. EA2, HB9, OE, S5, EA7, OK, OH, F, SM, SP, SV, UW and on 17m F, S5, YO.
Think it depends on the conditions.
At -10c at fresh wind it is not a pleasure to stay. So several bands and jumping between them does not make sense. I think jumping between the bands does not make sense anyway… as RBN is detecting stations with a certain delay. Further, postings in DXClusters or similar sources will direct chasers to a frequency with no activator … doesn’t make sense either…
If the weather is nice sometimes I tend to stay longer, then working on 3 bands is fine.
Then I start with 40m which is usually a big pile up. After about 30-40 minutes moving to 30m. Here usually there are only small pile ups. After 10-15 min moving to 20m, where there are not so many callers compared to 40m.
But I agree 2 bands are a comfortable approach and since last activations I tend to follow this approach. Even one band is a choice but then you have to decide which chasers to serve… the more local or the more remote…
So one band for local chasers and another one for more remote chasers (>1500km) makes sense in my opinion.
