If there was better day for activating a summit this year, I can’t remember it!
Left home early this morning to take advantage of the WX and even at 0600z it was very warm.
Decided to start with 20m for a change and I worked a steady stream of chasers in a nice orderly fashion…Magic!
No real DX about with the exception of two calls from VK. Both armchair copies done on 5 Watts and could have easily have been worked on a lot less power, however, the FT-857 won’t drop bellow 5 Watts on HF.
The first contact was the same call I worked on GW/NW-044 Moel Famau last year and the second may be the first VK SOTA chaser into the UK, as he knew all about SOTA and asked for the summit reference. His QTH was a 17500Km hop into Tasmania, so this may be a double first for SOTA UK.
The VHF band was very busy with some DX appearing from time to time. Highlight of the day, sharing my qrg with Ken G4ASA/P, who was on Kinder Scout. Ken was struggling with a Hand Held as his FT-817 was still with the rig doctor. He had just qualified the summit, but who wants to leave G/SP-001 with just four contact, so we spent an hour working quite a few stations. Thanks Ken, most enjoyable…
Another bright spot, was working M6ZBT Baz, who had been listening to the activation while waiting for her brand new callsign to be confirmed by OFCOM. OFCOM emailed her confirmation and she was able to make her first ever QSO, a nice SOTA contact onto G/SP-004. Thanks Baz!
Thanks to all the Chasers for calling in, 184 contacts completed, once again, making a very nice days radio.
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Good to see that you are getting some chasers from VK5 and VK7. There are some efforts to organise SOTA in VK5 at the moment, but non in VK7, but having chasers from there has to help.
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Good to see that you are getting some chasers from VK5 and VK7. There
are some efforts to organise SOTA in VK5 at the moment, but non in
VK7, but having chasers from there has to help.
The first VK/G S2S can’t be far away
Hi Wayne,
Roughly, any idea how many VK7 summits would qualify for SOTA status?
In reply to 2E0YYY:
There are many summits in VK7 that would qualify, however most of them would only be rarely activated. Some summits would take a week to get in and out from, some perhaps even longer. I have walked in some of those places - and it is wild country indeed.
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Thanks for sharing your frequency and rounding up the chasers for me but I can assure you I have never had a relationship with Barbie.
It certainly was a lovely day, spent half an hour with my feet in the stream by the Pack Horse Bridge on the way back, cooled me down nicely.