Ah! I don’t really follow HF contests, I can normally swap between CW/SSB and bands to escape the mayhem. But the mayhem today was nice QSOs for the challenge. BY0AC was a damn big signal but he may well have had high noise levels that made his hearing QRP stations hard never mind EUs calling BI4XDT almost on the same frequency. Interestingly BY0AC was in the bit of China near Kyrgyzstan, just a few hundred miles fruther Noth.
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I couldn’t commit 48 hours to the CQWPX contest. Nor even 24 hours. What I did do though was go up The Cloud G/SP-015 before and after the football (Macclesfield v FC United of Manchester) on Saturday, and before and after a family Easter Sunday dinner outing the following day.
So I actually did four distinct ascents and set ups for my “two” activations of The Cloud G/SP-015 on Easter weekend! Normally I would go up Gun G/SP-013 for the second local activation on the same day, but had to return to The Cloud because I wanted to submit a token entry for CQWPX - and the rules require everything to take place within a single 500m diameter circle.
I used G5D - the SCC of the Tall Trees Contest Group, of which I am a member - and made some nice contacts (all 10m SSB).
Saturday 30th March 2024: 70 QSOs
Sunday 31st March 2024: 45 QSOs
So the QSO rate was painfully slow, but when I read about the experiences of Peter @MW0PJE and Andy @MM0FMF who also dabbled, it looks like I did OK, especially with the usual 5 watts QRP from the Yaesu FT-817, into a homemade quarterwave with groundplane.
4L Georgia: 1
4X Israel: 2
5B4 Cyprus: 4
BY China: 1
CE Chile: 1
CT3 Madeira: 1
CX Uruguay: 1
D4 Cape Verde Islands: 1
EA8 Canary Islands: 5
EX Kyrgyzstan: 2
G England: 11
GW Wales: 1
JA Japan: 5
KH6 Hawaii: 1
KP4 Puerto Rico: 2
LU Argentina: 6
PJ2 Curacao: 1
PJ4 Bonaire: 1
PJ5 St Eustatius: 1
PY Brazil: 19
RA Russia (European): 13
SV Greece: 1
TA Turkey: 2
UA9 Russia (Asiatic): 1
UN Kazakhstan: 1
UR Ukraine: 1
V2 Antigua & Barbuda: 1
V4 St Kitts & Nevis: 1
VE Canada: 5
W USA: 20
ZC4 British Military Bases, Cyprus: 1
ZF Cayman Islands: 1
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I activated Holme Fell G/LD-051 in early January. I had intended to do 10m CW but was so cold on summit, I did a quick 2m FM activation and quit. So, now it’s a lot warmer, I’m intending to go back on Wednesday (24th July, 1130utc) to try 10m again.
Like most of you, I’ve found 10m propagation in the doldrums since the spring and have struggled recently to get many contacts. So, as I’m confident there will be no pile-up I thought I would forgo using my usual Palm twin paddles for my Palm portable (straight) key instead. Being a short-level SK it’s hard work c.f. the paddles and I can’t key it much faster than ~15wpm without making mistakes, but it will be a bit of ‘retro’ fun.
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You’re not wrong Andy. 24 hrs of wspr transmissions (200mw) on 10m only produced this.
Hope it picks up for you. Maybe you should try a spark transmitter…
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Ok, I accidentally had the radio set to 40W but this was the result from around 30 minutes at lunchtime today from G/CE-004 with a dodgy flowerpot antenna.
FT8 reports into Europe varied from -11 in Germany to +18 in Denmark, and a -3 from Brazil.
Propogation into Europe on SSB was good at the start of the month, less good for me of late.
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What time did the 24hrs finish? At 1043 UTC this morning I had a contact with YL2LW who was 5/9 on SSB, he was working a string of DLs that I couldn’t hear and for me was the only station on the band. I listened for a string of SSB activations during the morning but drew a blank on them all. I have only heard a few wide-ranging Es openings this year, most have been tightly focussed on a smallish area so if the activations were outside this area they went unheard by me - all in all a very poor Es season for me but I have managed over forty Es SOTA contacts on SSB so far this year so perhaps I shouldn’t complain! 
Its worth noting that the SFI has been well over 200 this last week, and is 202 at present, so I hope this continues in the Autumn when F2 returns,
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It was still running when I posted this. Probably too far north for the E’s.
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When I see a 10 metres spot, tune to it, and then double-tripple-check that the antenna’s actually connected to the rig because, even with the pre-amp on max, there’s almost no background noise at all… 
…then it’s time to try another band.
At the moment there’s just about enough noise on 15 metres to indicate that it might be open, if that noise isn’t local.
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As I discussed with examples in Part 4 there’s not much point in even bothering if the MUFs between you and the spotted operator are below 28MHz.
As I write (1120utc) the MUFs in most of Europe are too low for (non-groundwave) 10m QSOs [notwithstanding very-weak-signal modes like wspr and ft8 seem to manage].
courtesy prop.kc2g.com
I’ll be checking this live MUFs website and DXHeat …
courtesy dxheat.com
…before I jump in the car Wednesday to do my planned 10m CW activation.
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Fake news.
It was still running, however the external GPS antenna failed, so it stopped transmitting.
New antenna rigged. 10m wspr resumed.
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I find the quickest way of checking that is to listen on the frequency. That not-even-background-noise is a good indication the band’s dead. Sometimes I’ll check the propagation sites, but especially if there’s a chance of sporadic E, actually listening is the best check.
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As posted a few months ago, a quick look at the propagation panel on the home page of qrz.com will tell you if there is Es in EU on 6m, 4m and 2m. Of course that does not mean that there is a useful path open to you, but I find as a chaser it is worth sitting on or frequently checking a spotted frequency because if you are lucky you will get one of those sudden openings and an inaudible activation will almost instantly be S9!
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I use DX Heat website to get a flavour of what is propagating to where and on what band.
Yes, considering the promising start to the year and the strong belief that we are still approaching the peak of the cycle through most if not all of 2024, 10m has not been so good for a few months now. At least the Sp.E has offered up the European countries that were absent back when the band was performing.
N-S still seems to be holding up. Brazil is a regular visitor to my 10m SOTA logs atm, and Antarctica the other day was extremely pleasing.
That said, on Holyhead Mountain GW/NW-069 yesterday I struggled to raise anything. PY stations were calling CQ in the contest on SSB but not hearing my replies. The FT8 frequency was busy but I was reluctant to set up the laptop in the rain - plus I wanted a quick activation with a soundcheck time looming!
I did that cheeky thing of operating on 2m FM and inviting people to QSY and also work me on 10m SSB. Not the most fun or satisfying way to activate, but got the job done.
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A significant chunk of my rather poor 10 metres chasing has been ground-wave…
Yeah, works nicely if you have the time.
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That would tell you, you have a path to that particular station’s location at the moment. Okay, if you want to chase it straightaway.
True, and that’s fine for a chaser at home in his shack, but as ….
[uksmg.org] Sporadic-E events may last for just a few minutes to several hours; a given event usually affects only small areas of the country at any one time.
… that’s useless to me as an activator as the time to drive to parking place, walk to summit, set up my station and be QRV on 10m is 2-3 hours, so I always want to know what’s likely later not now.
In practise, if SFI and K look reasonable and MUFs are above or heading above the frequency of my highest alerted band, I take the risk and go. I’ve had a few solar flares/solar particle events cause SIDs that have ruined 80, 60 and 40m on a few activations, but I’ve never had a problem with 30m [my favourite band] late mornings/early afternoons. I take any contacts on 10m as a bonus and doubt anyone has a reliable way of predicting success 2-3 hours out this time of year.
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A really severe SID can take out the bands up to 30 MHz, but the worst I’ve encountered took out 20m.
I think the best answer is to have a selection of beacon stations permanently in the memories, spread around Europe, these give an instant read on which directions are likely to be useful or the silence of “don’t bother”! Right now the only one I can hear is ED4YBA on 28.262 and its barely audible, a definate “don’t bother”!
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10m FM would be a bit more fun.
We heard the PY contest stations but they couldn’t hear me. It seemed like they couldn’t hear any of the other, more powerful European stations that were calling them either.
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The exception that proves the general rule [that 10MHz and above are still usable with most SIDs]
Best answer? If you are a chaser (and I have beacon frequencies programmed into my shack FT857D for those occasions). But a ‘best answer’ has to work for activators too.
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They’re very different games, so I’d expect very different best answers…
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Lots of PY7 and PY6 stations calling CQ Test in SSB today at around 1200Z. Not interested in me 
But I did work a PY1 on the key 
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