I will attempt another final activation from LP-002 tomorrow, Wednesday.
This is the most difficult summit of the three but I have a supply of water buried at the summit from the last activation. It is a 10KM journey each way and I shall leave the hotel at 0645 and hope to be active around 1000z.
I shall start on 18.088 MHz CW and advise Roy G4SSH of any changes. I will use 30-50w.
Thanks for the tip off Roy, & thank you to John for returning to LP-002 as I missed him last week due to work.
I have just swapped (yes at 2AM) the 500Hz CW filter from my FT897 into my FT817 so I should be able to cope better if any of the bands are a little crowded. There was no problem using the standard 2.8KHz SSB filter for CW on Monday as there was very little else heard on 12m when I worked John.
I will keep an eye on the spots & dash out from work on the bike again, hopefully my 5 Watts will be heard through the inevitable pile-up John’s 30-50 Watts will generate!
I will probably only try CW unless I can hear John from the works car park in which case I may give SSB a try as well.
John is at the summit of LP-002 and is setting up his equipment
WX is sunny, 3c with some frost, wind 3 mph.
Expects QRV about 0945z
Propagation appears to be very poor on the higher bands this morning.
Bands above 14 MHz appear to be almost dead in North Yorkshire so John may drop down to 14052-cw to start.
Signals seemed to deteriorate from then on in, as far as I could hear. He was about 54 when I first heard him (in S2S QSO with G6WRW/P), and about 31 last time I think I heard him. He seems to have vanished now…
I got dragged out to the garden centre and got back about 5 minutes ago - bad timing. I think going onto HF FM was a good experiment which I would like to see again sometime.
I think you managed to work John last week on LP-002 so at least you do have the chase.
Thanks to Roy’s early warning I timed things perfectly this morning, dashing out of work on the Bike up to Belthorn & being set up by 0947z. I hadn’t logged on to SOTAwatch on my phone so checked first on 17m & didn’t find John. Noting Roy’s comment that 20m may be tried first I dropped to 14MHz & found John almost straight away. The antenna I had was meant for 17m so I couldn’t get the SWR down completely on 20m but I thought I would give it a try anyway, before dropping & modifying the antenna. I was using an FT817 @ full power (about 4 Watts)with a SOTAbeams EFHW tuner & about 8m of wire up a fishing pole.
I heard John work G0UUU, then Kevin G0NUP (both audible at my QTH) then I called him. Thankfully at that point he hadn’t yet been spotted so I had an easy QSO with John 599 sent 559 received, with John mentioning my trip out of work on the bike to avoid the QRN.
By the time we had finished our QSO Roy’s spot had appeared & from then on John had a nice pileup.
I would like to thank other chasers that were waiting to work John very early on 14.0525 for standing by whilst we had our QSO. As I had to go straight back to work I really didn’t want to have to compete with KW stations for John’s attention Hi Hi.
Later after John had his lunch I thought I would see if I could copy anything from the works car park, in the middle of an industrial estate in Blackburn. Amazingly I could copy John on 24909 KHz CW using only the FT817 & a telescopic whip for 10m.
Thanks Roy for the spots & especially to John for another chance to chase LP-002.
