Event time and weather conditions are not good for US activators. 8-11 UTC is in the middle of the local night, and there is a snow storm across US.
I’ll be more than happy to support another FT8 SOTA party at a more suitable time for NA if there is interest over there.
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At parking spot and kitting up for this morning’s event.
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Oh - that’s sad. I seem to recall you advising so many others on how to do it too.
Some party this is - only me has turned up! 
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Did you shame them into coming on? I saw S57ILF and 9A1AA work you. 
Oh yeah I’ve worked plenty of chasers Gerald, but none of the anticipated other FT8 activators appear to have made it.
Just had my CQ answered in JA* though so that’s pleasing.
*and twice further 
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Apologies disastrous here time sync not working 
trying to fix hope to be on soon…
Just set the time manually. That’s what I do. If you’re within +/- 0.9 seconds it will work fine.
The time sync program that Paul and I use is off this morning. It got me confused for a while when there were no decodes. I had to use my backup sync program to get WSJT to work. Hopefully a manual adjustment to phone or watch will do the trick. 
Paul now QRV. I just watched him work an Italian station, but he hasn’t received / or been able to reply to my calls yet. Not seen him call again since he made the QSO either.
Hi Tom,
Saw some JA chasers but nil from you. Tried to work a G station but QSB killed the QSO. Only 2 G stations and one GW seen over an hour of watching, no real propagation tonight.
Congrats for getting out there.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Me too. He’s disappeared again.
And he’s back - but not hearing / decoding me.
Maybe we’ll have better luck on 2m?
Sorry laptop battery about gone perhaps catch some on ssb. Apologies have been dogged by problems this morning
I know. I had the old Win8 tablet talking to this Win10 convertible fine. Then the Win8 tablet was put on the shelf. I use this Win10 thing all the time when travelling (like now from the Hotel in Newton Stewart). But the Win8 has sat on the shelf. When I tried, it wouldn’t boot and I left in on charge for an hour. Then it booted. But the touch screen has periods when it doesn’t see any touches… bad on a tablet. Also it will freeze/lock up and you have to poke a paper clip into the reset hole and wait while it reboots.
None of this makes sense from just letting the battery go flat. If I’d had had more time I’d have tried a restore on it. But I didn’t. However, by the time I got to the summit, Paul’s FT8 machine battery ws long dead. Had a normal QSO though.
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Friday 29th November 2019 - The Cloud G/SP-015
Gig: Mindbenders & Steve Ellis, 60s Gold
Venue: Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
It was a shame that Paul @G4MD ran out of computer power and Andy @mm0fmf couldn’t get his system working, so no FT8 S2S. To be fair, I myself struggled with both those issues back at the start of my FT8 SOTA activating experience, so can empathise. Like I say, it’s something that seems easy and straightforward in theory, but only actually doing it on a summit will throw up the issues that still need to be ironed out, issues that you probably didn’t even previously think about!
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. You just need to show some stickability and keep on with it.
Nonetheless, I still had a great activation. I received and decoded Paul G6GGP/P on Walton Hill G/CE-002 no problem, so it’s going in the SWL log at least.
I made 26 QSOs on 30m FT8, including several recognised chasers, and three JA stations. 6 QSOs were added on 30m CW, followed by 6 on 2m FM and 3 on 70cm FM making a total of 41 for the activation.
S2S:
TM8AB on F/AM-614 (30m CW)
M6BWA/P on G/WB-022 (2m FM)
M6BWA/P on G/WB-022 (70cm FM)
G4VPX/P on G/WB-016 (2m FM)
SWL:
G6GGP/P on G/CE-002 (30m FT8)
It was a cold but beautiful morning on Cloud summit - a delight to be out in the fresh air. Later that day I had the thrill of performing at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall for the first time in my career, and even better that I was able to get my XYL Marianne and sons Jimmy M0HGY and Liam on the guest list. Also on the guest list was my mum Kate, who was a fan of all these bands (Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders, Steve Ellis & Love Affair, The Marmalade, The Merseybeats, Herman’s Hermits) back in their 60s heyday.
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Just like to thank everyone who was looking for me, and apologise again for largely failing to deliver on FT8. It was certainly a learning experience, but hopefully a meaningful step on the way to successful FT8 activating
In case it helps others avoid the pitfalls I encountered, headline learnings were -
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make sure the leads are long enough - the ones I’d made up were fine on the bench in the shack, but set up on the hill even an extra 300mm would have allowed for a more comfortable operating position
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Make sure your computing device is fully updated - unbeknown to me last time the laptop was on it must have downloaded a huge Windows update, when I switched it on it spent 15 minutes playing with itself, then told me it would complete install on restarting. I avoided this for as long as possible, but eventually in the hope that it might sort the timing issues I did restart which lost me a further 10 minutes of precious battery time
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Try to avoid reliance on internet connection for time synchronisation. My 4G connection was in and out like a fiddler’s elbow, this may have contributed to the problems I had getting time sync via both the windows system utility and the 3rd party service I use.
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In case all else fails, make sure you can sync time manually - when I tried to do this I found the manual set dialogue only showed hours and minutes, and attempts to reset to the second (fortunately I’d got my MSF sync’d watch with me) by hitting the “change” button on an exact minute were continually frustrated by seemingly 2 - 5 second variable latency between hitting the button and the change being effected. Not sure what the answer to this one is atm…
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Check the set-up at home exactly as it will be implemented in the field - I did wonder whether the fact I was using a 4G phone hotspot as opposed to the home WiFi was a factor in failure to get time sync (though Gerald G4OIG did alert me to an issue with the servers, and changing the server finally did result in successful synchronisation)
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Practice more so that operation of the software is second nature. It seemed to be behaving differently on the hill to my practice set up at home, particularly in that the edited macros (CQ SOTA, G/CE-002) seemed to reset to the defaults on almost every transmission. Presumably it was doing exactly what it always had, or I was doing something wrong, but the combination of cold and frustration must have dulled my senses somewhat :-s
There also seemed to be radio issues, I wasn’t seeing people who were calling me and people I was calling weren’t seeing me. That could just be propagation, of course but I’ll give the kit a good going over…
Despite all this, I did manage 3 FT8 QSOs from my summit, with IW3AGO, IN3XUG and 9A1AA, so the duck is definitely broken! Like the man said, I’ll be back - when equipment and skills are honed. But probably not when the ambient temperature is -2C…
I went on to have a very enjoyable activation on 60m and 80m ssb, working a collection of “regulars” and including s2s with M0JLA, G4VPX, G8CPZ and the jewel in the crown MS0TA so thanks to all and to Tom for stirring up the flurry of activity 
73 de Paul (G6GGP this time)