Hello,
I just wanted to say thank you to all chasers and to the Sota community helping me reaching my first goal.
I just passed my licence one month ago and what was motivating me was really doing sota activations. I then tried to learn CW as fast as possible to do my first summit.
Here I am, sunday afternoon, the kids are sleeping I jump in the car drive 20 minutes and run to the summit.
Obviously I forgot my rope to secure my mast, BUT I had ducktape so here I go, sketchy setup (first one outside my garden) but not that bad, my shoelaces to secure the other end of my EFHW to a tree and a deep breath because I was really stressed.
Trying to find a spot on 20m but thereās a contest going on so not a single space for me and my 5W QMX. Luckily I added a small trap to my antenna to add the 30m band the night before.
Launching my first CQ and F5JKK and F4WBN responded almost instantly nicely reducing the speed for me to get it (superstars from what I found out later).
It was pretty cold and windy so I made a lot of keying mistakes but it looks like almost everyone got me.
Thank you all chasers for being so patient with me on my first time, the community is great honnestly, I donāt have access to a club but I find a lot of help in SOTA Reflector and other ham groups (qrplabs community is also great).
Quick questions:
I had some really really weak signals and varying, I spent like 2 minutes figuring out the callsign thanks to another person stepping in with really good signal and helping me get it. How long do you try usually, I felt it was maybe too much for the other chasers waiting, but I also felt bad for the person trying to contact meā¦ ?
Do you have any simple tips for beginners like me ? (except writing a checklist of things to take )
If I know there are a lot of people waiting, I try for about 30 seconds, but no more than that. I also try to take the loud chasers first and save the faint signals for quieter moments. Otherwise, the strong signals will obliterate the rest anyway and complicate the process, so itās better to get rid of them first.
Hi Antoine, Congratulations on getting your license, and welcome to the SOTA Community, it sounds like you are already addicted, I am sorry to say there is no vaccine for that addiction, just go for it 73 Tony
Good to know, itās a good tactic to take the powerful signals first and spend some more time on the quieter chasers, Iāll apply that next time. For the Morse I mainly use the Morse machine on lcwo.net I tried a new learning strategy where every 30 minutes (9:00-18:00) I decode 100 or 200 characters it takes 2minutes max and by the end of the day Iāve almost done 30ā of decoding. And also I use 20wpm for letter speed as Iāve seen this advice a lot, to learn the āmusicā.
The event looks awesome, itās actually not that far from Grenoble so maybe
Well the kids are 4month old and 3 years old so it a bit soon for winter summits but Iāll definitely bring them next summer !!
Well I figured I forgot my rope once parked so I quickly unlaced my casual shoes (the one I was driving with) and put the laces in my bag. The funny part is when I came back to my car and removed my trail running choose to put my casual shoes back on and realize my laces were still up there hanging from the tree I need new laces now
Thanks a lot @F4WBN and @F5JKK for your perfect pace and strong signal for the first 2 qso. It definitely helped me a lot to relax and realize I was able to do that and it was not only YouTube videos for me but the real deal !! I promise Iāll adapt and send BJR and MCI next time, yesterday I was so stressed I was mechanically following my small piece of paper I prepared with what to say
Thanks again for your messages it means a lot !!
73, Antoine
Thanks, for the moment I only have 20m and 30m on my efhw I was planning to add 40m (2.5m of wire) at the end of it by adding another trap (tuned for 30m).
What you say is really tempting I guess I can try and build a smaller version of my efhw for 15-12-10 same concepts, with traps and use the same transformer.
I donāt really want to cut the first segment of the one I already made by fear of āruiningā it ^^ tuning it with traps was painful because the traps mess with the resonant point of the ābefore trapā segment a little bit (first time I do that).
I also saw great multiband version with no traps that look promising on reflector so maybe Iāll try that too.
Hello Antoine,
Wonderfullā¦ Bienvenue dans le monde du Sotaā¦et de la CW.
Ah, emportez un talky VHF bien utile pour contacter les locaux en direct ou via relais. (jāai un UVK5 Chinois Ć 20ā¬)
Gerald F6HBI
Yes, maybe, although it seems like Iāve read that others have found this tricky for the high HF bands.
Something to think about if you plan to frequently activate summits which are forested: Vertically polarized radiation at HF is significantly more attenuated by close tree trunks than horizontal polarization.
If a trapped (or link-coupled) EFHW is installed in an inverted-L form, such that the active half-wavelength of wire is running mainly vertically, this would of course produce mostly vertical polarization on that band.
A quick solution might be to build a center-fed dipole for 10 m. This is super easy and has the benefit in the forest of horizontal polarization. Later on you could add links and wire segments for 12 m, 15 m, etc. like this:
)
I need new laces now
