daylight is pretty long now here in central Europe. Starting with 5:00 CEST (3:00 UTC) and ending past 21:00 CEST (19:00 UTC). At the same time temperatures rising above 30C. I think activating early in the morning (=lower temperatures) would be more pleasent than at noon.
Just wondering, what would be the earliest time for an activation, without having to fear not to qualify, because chasers are still staying in their beds
Would 4:00 UTC or 5:00 UTC be a reasonable time?
73 Stephan, DM1LE
PS: In Germany the saying âAn der Matratze horchenâ i.e. listening to the mattress, is a synonym for sleeping. So chasing seems to be a tough 24h job, with listening either to the bands or to the mattress
In reply to DM1LE:
I donât have a set routine Stephan, but of late I usually check for activity most days at around 0600-0730z on SOTAWatch before I make some breakfastâŠ
In reply to DM1LE:
G day Phil and Stephan , today my earliest 20m qso was to vk2io at 0521 utc when activating and a good signal from ok2pdt and dl3jon ea2pi all close to 0630, G4obk and s2s with ea2cw all done and in my log by 0639. So ea2cw must have been up quite early to be on the summit working a pile up by 0630 utc. My sunset is very close to 0730 utc now and I was comfortable during the activation but shivering by the time I packed up looking for my extra coat and gloves.
Conditions are dropping of much sooner now I was checking for some active stations in Europe tonight at 11.00 utc and just local noise on my rig on 14 up to 21 MHz were the alerts were announced on SOTA watch.
But we have to keep working at it to get those good activations along with the bad. By the way Phil I was using an FT 857 @ 20 watts today to a 66 foot doublet missed the good filter of the kx3 I must say. 73 good luck de Ian vk5czâŠ
Great signal today Ian into VK6, I was in and out of the shack today so nice to catch you with such a big signal. Also worked Nigel VK5NIG on SSB and Wayne VK3WAM QRP a few times over the past few days.
Iâm using a 44ft doublet as my home antenna at moment and they are excellent antennas.
In reply to VK5CZ:
Hi, Ian!
As I wrote to you, I spent the night at the summit in an abandoned military facilities just there, as to be able to be asleep soon. All doors and windows have been broken, but the inside temperature was not below 8ĂÂșC⊠hot enough, I think!
Iâve checked with VOACAP our S2S QSO and it might have been made thru the long path (given frequency and time) to a total of 23.457 km, perhaps a S2S world record !!??
At least, it was the first EA-VK S2S QSO ever made so congratulations!
When will we repeat it??
Servus Stephan!
Wenn wir uns am Band nicht hören, jedenfalls lesen wir uns. Ich bin montags des öfteren auf einem âkleinen Bergâ gegen 9 Uhr LT. Aber da ist die Kurzwelle in EU meist unbrauchbar, in eine Runde ohne Umschaltpause will man doch nicht einsteigen und fĂÂŒr VK wieder zu spĂ€t. Die 4 QSOs bringt man irgendwie zusammen, aber es ist halt nicht lustig, wenn man ein kleines Pileup gewöhnt ist.Heute wars hier 37 Grad im SchattenâŠ
Thanks for all replies.
So I would consider the timeframe between 05:00 and 06:00 would be appropriate for an early activation. An announcement on Sotawatch the day before and mixed mode operation, i.e ssb and cw, should definitely help.
Holger: Ja das stimmt auf den BĂ€ndern haben wir uns schon lange nicht mehr gehört. Apropos âkleine Bergeâ, es steht ja noch ein GroĂĆžer auf unserem Programm; Schnee sollte ja kein Problem mehr sein. Mal schauen was Hansjörg dazu meint.
as some other have said - by starting early you will catch the Long path into VK-Land. the actual âwindowâ for this varies a little but if you can activate between 0600 and 0800 on 20m at the moment, you should have a very good chance of a couple of contacts into VK.
When I activated Irschenhausen (DL/BE-094) on 20/4/14. I actually qualified the summit with 4 contacts from VK and then went on to work a total of 22 stations (including a further 4 VK stations, one of those an S-2-S) between 05:40 and 07:15. So you donât need to worry about having enough chasers to qualify. Iâm assuming you wish to qualify on HF - VHF/UHF qualification so early in the morning may be more of a problem HI.
