@EA2IF …thank you for listening for me Guru. Band conditions for QRP were difficult on Thursday and yesterday. I did manage to easily qualify all four summits with many contacts on HF but rapid QSB was very much evidence. One EA station was 5/9+ and after exchange of signal reports dropped to 4/1 and disappeared. Catch you when conditions improve…fingers crossed.
73 Allan
Hi Andy,
Craig and I had our QSO on 20m at 08h50z and you showed up on 30m at 11h01z. A 2h10 time makes a huge difference and propagation conditions do change a lot in such a time window.
Not really. My location in Spain is very much North. I’m about 50Km in a straight line from the French border. However, my location in a Southerly peripheric Country makes it difficult for me to work central Europeans on 60m and 40m.
This is the location of my QTH with respect to the city of Pamplona:
30m is usually the best band for me to work central Europe.
Regarding the British and Irish, I find 30m OK, but I’d say 20m is slightly better for my actual antennas situation. Following you’ll see a satellite image of my QTH where I’ve drawn the dipole wires for you to see their orientation.
The broadband dipole in red, is multiband and I can use it on any band from 6m to 160m. Its orientation is NorthEast-SouthWest.
The monoband 40m bazooka dipole is much better than the broadband dipole on 40m and it’s the antenna I nearly always use on that band. Its orientation is NorthWest-SouthEast.
The yagi is a 5 elements tribander (4 el. on 10m, 3 el. on 15m and 3 el. on 20m). It’s beaming North in the image (taken many years ago) but it’s currently stuck beaming West:
I also have a monoband 80m bazooka dipole whose branches go pretty much together with the broadband dipole. I very rarely chase SOTA on 80m because central European or UK and EI activators are too far away for this band and there are very few activations in EA or F on 80m.
The yagi and the dipoles apex are about 14.5m above the ground.
As you can see on the above map, Central Europe (ON, DL, SP, HB, OE, OK, OM, HA, etc) are North-East of me, then I, S5, YU, 9A, YO, LZ, 4O, SV are all to the East, while the UK and Ireland are pure North. I often find that I can copy the UK and EI on 20m better with my yagi beaming West than with my broadband dipole oriented pretty much East-West.
My monoband 40m bazooka works fine for the UK on 40m too.
I have several options to try and its a lot of fun switching between different antennas to see the difference in reception between them. Sometimes, the broadband dipole gets and puts out a weaker signal but it gets less noise on RX than the monoband bazooka dipole and I have sometimes used the quieter broadband dipole for RX and the more punchy monoband bazooka for TX.
It’s difficult to say if one band is better than other for G-EA contacts. It all depends on propagation conditions and the time of the activations have a significant importance. The Eastern European countries often activate too early for us in the West of Europe and being the Sun on us 2-3 hours behind with respect to them, propagation conditions have not yet built up for us.
Well, sorry for my long post, but I hope you’ll find it of interest.
73,
Guru
It wasn’t a question of distance/ signal, it was a question of mode. I use CW only rigs.
73,
Colin
If you try it - especially with a portable system from a mountain-top - you will seen identify the skills involved - both in terms of getting a reliable working portable system working, and in being able to chase other stations on the bandmap, and attract responses to your own CQ SOTA calls.
I quite agree that in advance of that experience, it is natural to assume that there are no skills involved - just plug in, switch on, click a button and sit back. Actually trying it throws up several area that one needs to “skill up” on to get it running properly!
With any new datamode I’ve tried (PSK, RTTY, JT65, FTx, MSK, SSTV), it’s taken me an average of 4 activations to have the thing working properly.
Personally, I don’t think you can really know whether you like datamodes or not until you’ve tried them in various contexts. For instance, I find PSK and RTTY operating from home very boring. When I tried doing PSK SOTA activations, I found it most enjoyable. FT8 and FT4 I really enjoy both from the home shack and while activating a summit. SSTV I’ve found annoying and tedious on HF, but a lot of fun on VHF.
Similarly, many years ago I assumed that I’d really enjoy geocaching. I tried it a few times, persisted with it (anyone remember SOTAcaches?), but ultimately had to conclude that I detested it!
“You really don’t know until you try” - definitely applies to individual datamodes!
Tom, I don’t want to make this too serious (after all it’s a trivial matter) but as you made some statements the pedant in me urges me to reply.
The “You really don’t know until you try it” argument although frequently used is fallacious. Through observation and imagination we humans are pretty good at predicting what is uninteresting, unpleasant or even downright dangerous to us without having “to try it”.
There must be thousands of activities we dismiss this way throughout our lives and we’re probably wrong on a few occasions. But hey, life is short and there are many known pleasures beckoning me.
I’ve read and watched YouTube videos about FT8 enough to convince me that I’m not interested. The setup and operating skills you mention are true of any reasonably complex portable station setup in the field and anything FT8 specific is likely to be pretty small beer.
Of course, if people enjoy doing FT8, that’s all that matters but nothing you’ve said so far changes my mind that this mode appears not to require any specific amateur radio or computer skills most of us don’t already have.
73 Andy
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I guess we’re in agreement Andy then, as my point is that the confidence you describe is typical of everyone. What is also typical is that these confident people, myself included, rarely get Datamodes working first attempt. They need to go away, rethink, and perhaps develop a new and unanticipated skill. By continuing to profess your confidence while continuing to refuse to consider planning your debut Datamode SOTA activation, you are confirming my point.
Each to their own of course - there’s plenty on amateur radio to keep us all busy and entertained without trying absolutely everything. But it continues to amuse me that folks with zero Datamode contacts in their activator logs seem so confident about it!
Hi Phil,
Was nice to copy you today on nice short skip 20m 
I had a time I was using a 7 elements LPA ASL2010 by Cushcraft at 14m up with when needed an old Swan Amp (2 X 3-400Z), I could contact anything I heard 
for example
Bouvet Island :
North Korea :
Clipperton Island :
I stopped at 330 countries and now since 17 years ago I don’t used an amplifier and working with only wire antennas…
And in addition I find it ridiculous ++ to use an amplifier to contact a portable station which has 5 watts in a poor antenna and its bottom in the snow, but everyone does what they want… 
Now chasing with 100w no more and very happy with this, but we are all dependent on the state of wave propagation and portable stations all the more and whatever the mode used.
As you say so well, the DXCC is easily within reach in FT8, and whatever we say we just have to adapt!
May the amateur radio spirit persist 
73 Éric
Edit : Excusez-moi pour mon anglais approximatif
With you all the way Eric, and thanks for the quick shout and exhanged reports today mid-chasing when we were working Andy @OE6ADE. Just after that I worked HB15SOTA (Stefan @HB9HCS) on 17m SSB, and you were in there again about 57. I’m not chasing SOTA every day of late. but today for me the 17m and 20m bands were brilliant for working SOTA stations in EU - outstanding propagation in the 500-2000 mile skip zone and 30/40m were pretty good also. There was sporadic E on 4m (EA-G at least FT8) and strong all mode Es on 6m, 10m and 12m from G to most of the EU. I would go so far as to say the best condx for SOTA within EU for many months.
Thanks for showing those QSOs - not many EU DXers worked the Georgian 4L/P5 guy when he was in North Korea! I believe he never worked CW, only SSB and RTTY. This was pre-PSK / “funny modes”. A few of us got him on RTTY including you. I had one of the AEA PK-232 terminal units in those days when they were state of art! Like you at that time I had a big station. Yaesu FT-1000MP with 10 element Tennadybe Log periodic on 18m tower and a first edition Acom 1000. Happy days and suspot numbers over 100+ day after day…
Some of us “old timers” as Tom M1EYP has been known to call us (HaHa) could be on our last sunspot cycle - so let’s hope this one is a good one. Maybe we’ll see another through after that, but that will find me to be around 90 years old (68+22), so cannot see me on the bands and once I am 70 I don’t plan to do much activating after that. There’s plenty of other stuff to do in the hobby to keep the grey cells active.
Good to see there are more Russian and Former USSR Republic stations SOTA Chasing now as well. I’ve heard several callsigns of late who are becoming regular chasers who have picked up on the “sport”.
73 and a long life OM,
Phil G4OBK
Phil, It was just a joke!
