Ron, I’m sticking my (ignorant) neck out here with this propagation-related question: I know that sunspots come and go and affect dx condx, but on average isn’t the southern hemisphere being in summer now enjoying higher MUFs and for longer [than us in the north shivering in mid winter] and as a consequence having better conditions on the higher HF bands?
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Brian, I’m sorry to hear you’ve been suffering from unruly chasers. You didn’t mention which band(s) or mode(s) this was on.
My experience is more like what you experienced back in 2009. But then I activate mainly on 30m CW where the vast majority of chasers are perfect gentlemen or perfect ladies. I find it’s a bit less civilized on 20m and I’m guessing that’s due to a couple of factors: more non-SOTA-chaser stations and more variable condx over the signal paths (e.g. many chasers can’t hear each other).
But as experienced activators have written on other threads, there are things the activator can do to ignore unruly chasers and control the crowd.
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Summer is usually worse conditions than winter because the increased day length changes the chemistry of the ionosphere.
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Well right now we have nothing to complain about in the northern hemisphere, DX-wise! I have just been trawling through the 10m band and there is lots of DX at impressive signal strengths, mainly Asia and the middle East but some from NA. I don’t know whether this is F2 or our winter Es season, or perhaps both, but I hope its as good tomorrow! The problem for Ron might be the phenomenon known as the “mid summer doldrums” where the bands get a bit lacklustre for several weeks, but it is also the height of the southern sporadic E season so he should be reasonably OK!
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Short Term (i.e. the next 3-4 days) - this (if it emits CMEs as expected) may make the bands noisier and bring the MUF down:
Coronal hole faces Earth | SpaceWeatherLive.com
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Hi,
I enjoyed my end of the year activation yesterday in EA2/NV-037, running a random end fed wire plus ZM-2 tuner.
When I was about to go QRT I saw spots from @ZS6Fy and @ZS6LZ , both on two separate ZS summits, in 28 MHz SSB.
I couldn’t believe they were quite good in my radio and we worked S2S with ease.
I’m looking forward to enjoy 10m next year, as I did this one!
73 Ignacio
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What a stroke of luck, congratulations Ignacio.
ZS hasn’t been that common in SOTA so far - and unfortunately (for me) certainly not in cw.
That’s probably why my 6 previous SOTA QSOs with chasers in ZS2/3/5 (QSOs on 14, 18, 21, 24 and 28 MHz) date from 2013/14/15.
By the way, the QSOs on 24 and 28 MHz with ZS5J took place only with a short upper & outer multi-band antenna on HB/BE-094 … in the antenna’s preferred direction to the north …
As we all know, if the propagation is good, any antenna is the best antenna, hi.
73 HNY,
Heinz
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The antenna you have with you is the best, without exception!
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…just so long as it doesn’t suffer some critical failure on summit… 
(I did get 3 contacts from Wilmington during the 12m Challenge before something critical failed…)
Well Ed,
Don’t do that again, please. No ZL or VK6 contacts. One line of sight contact before UTC midnight. Indeed only just qualified after rollover.
Hard work getting FT8 contacts. But I’d best keep those to myself as even the mere hint of the mode causes some people to throw fits.
Weather was good and the morning traffic was very light. So not all bad.
Happy New Year.
73
Ron
VK3AFW.
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Sorry about that Ron - even I didn’t see the X5 flare coming!
The terrestrial weather here is around zero C and icy winds taking the temps below freezing, so not “ideal” activating weather.
73 Ed.
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A few more “down under”:
I can’t find a link to an SWL chart - should there be one?
And the “all associations” option finds no data:
73 Ed.
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Good refresher Ed for the arithmetic time tables - Chasers only - but once they get past 13 QSOs the mental arithmetic gets much harder! Great to see the stations down under getting into the challenge from the early GET-GO start!
Happy New Year,
Phil G4OBK
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Ah. That’d have been part of the reason the bands I tuned through were so quiet last night…
Edit: …and SpaceWeather.com’s X(Twitter) feed included this HF absorbtion map at just before 2200z last night:
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I personally think there should be, maybe one will appear when someone submits an SWL chase. I will certainly be recording some when i get the chance.
Ian
My last couple of attempts on 10m CW last year didn’t go too well so I’m pleased with my start to the challenge. At 1325 I called CQ despite there being a lot of QRM all over the CW end of the band. I did get one QSO with a VE station who gave me “559 in QRM”. I tried lower in the band but the QRM seemed to follow me. After a quick foray to 15m I went back to 10m and was relieved to find the QRM gone. This time there were 3 US QSOs. Did anyone else suffer this QRM or know what it might be?
Is 10m a new band for your homebrew rig or were you slumming it using a commercial rig?
Yep re flare. Just as I started my 2nd activation. Thankfully there were 3 other SOTA stations within groundwave distances or I’d have concluded the radio had died - even the noise-floor vanished. All having a somewhat frusttating time!
1 contact on 10m - line of sight. Rest on 40m. Took 40 mins to get contact #4.
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