North America <> Europe SOTA S2S Party - 19th November 2016 1400 - 1700 UTC

Activation Reports Pre-Planning
387

I headed out before dawn to a local peak in Laguna Beach in Coastal Southern California half way between LA and San Diego. I used a Buddipole with an Elecraft K2 operating at 50 watts. Given the intent was S2S into EU I focused on 17m and 15m. I had scoped out the location the day before and thought that a herd on goats on “fire duty” (they graze on the dry brush) was a good sign for Saturday especially as the propagation predictions into EU were pretty poor!!

I nabbed 4 NA S2S and none into EU. However, I was chased by 9A7W (Croatia) on 17m and managed to nab a couple of EU contacts into Belgium and Italy. 17m had a few EU stations that were load and clear and I got 57/59 reports from my Belgium/Italy contacts.

As you can see from my snaps the WX was very nice which is to be expected in So Cal in November/December.

Hal (N6JZT) was located on a peak in the distance in my picture with the Buddipole below.

Fun time and look forward to whatever is coming next.

Paul

4 Likes
388

Thanks Heinz!

You are fully right, I have been sloppy!

Now this is also fixed to log and what the best: today my number of S2S qsos increased 33% because of SOTAmates taking care.

Final summary (hopefully): “whereof eight S2S qsos (OH9XX/p, F5LKW/p, HB9AFI/p, G0POT/p, G0MFR/p, EA2IF/p, F6HBI/p and HB9BCB/p)" :grinning: :grinning: :grinning:

73, Saku OH2NOS

389

@W6PNG
We heard you also Paul…

Richard // N2GBR

391

You’re the second person to say I had a QSO with Barry N1EU, Barry himself was the other. One of you may have been wrong but not both. I checked the paper log for the entry before yours Gareth and there is a lot of crossing out and there it says EU scribles 1EU scribles. I worked EU2MM earlier on FU-039 and I must have typed EU and was offered EU2MM as possible call and hit enter and logged some nonsense. Barry has a lovely fist so I’ll put this down to me and not him. I’ll fix the log later.

I’m pleased to be able to offer you your first intercontinental S2S and Africa as well for something exotic. Though to be honest, it doesn’t feel like proper Africa like Morocco or Kenya or The Gambia etc. Better log that S2S as well…

392

As G0MFR is my witness :grin:, we definitely worked Andy. If I remember correctly, you were juggling two callers at the same time. Someone was calling over me but I persisted and made absolutely sure you confirmed with my callsign at 1546Z.

(update: I checked your online log Andy and I’m there clear as day at 1542Z - perhaps you just failed to realize I was calling you from a summit)

73, Barry N1EU

393

Glad I could help sort that out!
There were a few repeats and someone was calling over you Barry but what I heard definitely constituted a QSO!

73 Gareth

1 Like
394

Well done Gareth - fiddling around with antennas in the wet stuff shows a high level of commitment. Pleased that you had a good time and were rewarded for your efforts. It is a shame that not everyone was able to make trans-Atlantic contacts. The S2S contacts that I made to the USA and EA8 were firsts for me… and that is after almost 11 years of SOTA. Admittedly my main interest has been 2m SSB and 30m CW, but I have made forays onto the higher HF bands from time to time, but not realised any S2S contacts with the USA, working only chasers.

73, Gerald G4OIG

BTW, this is what my 20m / 17m link vertical looked like from my horizontal operating position. :wink:

1 Like
395

Out here in W6 it seems we (W6PNG and me N6JZT) were not successful in EU s2s QSOs. First I listened on 20m; very quiet but later lots of NA and one EU chasers and also s2s with N1EU in W2.

On 17m I heard many EU home stations, the only EU summit station I heard was GW4OIG CW very weak at the noise level so no QSO. I was using an IC706 and 20Ah Li battery running 50W.

Weather clear and dry, temp 3C at 7500 ft (2300m)

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396

Arghh, that almost makes me want to cry! Hopefully next time Hal.

73, Gerald G4OIG

1 Like
397

Thank you all for this very nice event!

With all day for SOTA (we are in UTC time zone) I decided to do a quick activation of CT/BL-024 early in the morning, followed by CT/BL-004…

Of course, climbing to CT/BL-004 and returning to the car delayed the activation of the CT/BA-012 , from which I intended to take part in S2S party.

CT/BA-012
I left the car at Fraguinha (nice lagoon and camping), climbing between the ravaged forest due to fires in summer.

The wx was cold and windy.

Between 1438z and 1546z 32 QSO were made in the 20, 17 and 15m band, all cw.

Of those, 4 were with North America (NA).
3 S2S, only one with NA : N1EU.

EU in suffix should mean something in this kind of events!.. :wink:
Tnx Barry!

I decide to quit before sunset because the mountain was almost engulfed by the clouds (1106 m high) and wind was stronger and stronger. And the temperature started to decline drastically.

I descent in the middle of the mist but I had the chance to view some fallow deer that crossed the path. They disappeared before I could take the camera out of the pocket but they were a nice view in a mountain that had no people in this cold day!

I reach the car when it starts snowing.

What a nice day!

Thanks everyone who took part. Looking forward for the next! :smile:

Vy 73 de Pedro, CT1DBS

The trig remains at CT/BA-012

The antenna farn and schack

Ravaged forest

A few minutes early the wind generator could be seen: Time to quit!
The black stuff is the RG-174

4 Likes
398

I did a quick fix yesterday Barry as I have a Win10 tablet with me. It’s really a convertible as there is a detachable keyboard. So you either have a 10.1in tablet or a small laptop. Win10 is not as bad as I expected it to be. In fact the first problem in the 9months I’ve had it was an update that didn’t apply itself causing the battery to drain. I’ve bodged that with a manual driver update and will let it try to update again when I get back to the UK this evening. It has a tiny quad core Atom CPU 2gb ram and a 32gb ssd (and a 64gb sdcard as well). It’s plenty fast enough for browsing, mail, running my mapping software and I’ve yet to find any Windows program that doesn’t work. It’s massive improvement over the Android tablet I had before.

Best of all the battery last about 10hrs when surfing and it only cost £125.

1 Like
399

Have a safe and easy trip back home Andy and thanks for the activations.

Ed.

400

The QRPTTF event on 22 April 2017 was mentioned as a possible NA-EU S2S event. But realize that QRPTTF is specifically and fundamentally a QRP-only event, which means maximum power of 5W on CW and 10W PEP on SSB. If the power guidelines can’t be respected, the events should probably be separated.

73, Barry N1EU

401

A good point. I wonder if people feel it’s acceptable to activate with more power during this event and work the other non-SOTA QRPTTF stations but not submit a log?

402

I would suggest that the next NA-EU event not be on the same time as QRPTTF as one issue we saw this time was finding a free frequency. QRPTTF is a well supported contest and while the first line intention of the SOTA S2S would be to get Summit to Summit (activator) contacts and the majority of QRPTTF stations will not be on SOTA summits, it’s better to have a “quieter” date - if one can be found.

It’s a nice idea for those stations who want to take part in QRPTTF and use a SOTA summit for a “normal” activation at the same time but not for the S2S event.

The QRPTTF event has staggered times as well, not sure how these wouuld fit with EU time zones -
Eastern (US): 0800-1800 EDT
Central (US): 0800-1800 CDT
Mountain (US): 0800-1800 MDT
Pacific(US): 0800-1800 PDT

Ed.

403

An excellent point Barry - apologies, I hadn’t thought it through when I made that suggestion.

Looking at the aims of the event last Saturday, primarily it was to try to make NA-EU S2S contacts. I for one had not made any such contacts prior to this event taking place. It was not an event to see what could be achieved with QRP. The fact that activators were prepared to take tents, heavy batteries and multiple antennas up to their chosen summits shows that.

While QRP and the NA-EU S2S event are not entirely incompatible, my feeling is that we should be looking at a separate date to the QRPTTF. What do others think?

73, Gerald G4OIG

404

I agree that the two should be kept separate. I think there was mileage in the past of combining QRPTTF with “International SOTA Weekend” (as it was), but these intercontinental S2S events are already clearly too big and too wide a remit to be mixing with a focused event like QRPTTF. It would have the potential to be quite disruptive.

Mind you, what’s all this about tents, heavy batteries and multiple antennas? A perfectly acceptable MO if that’s your personal choice, but entirely unnecessary. I used a single band homemade wire quarterwave antenna and an FT817 running 5 watts for NA-EU S2S. 37 S2S QSOs in the three hours. Big power and big antennas are hugely overrated. :wink:

1 Like
405

I’ve participated in QRPTTF 2014-2016 as a SOTA activator. Although it’s open to CW and SSB participation, in reality it’s primarily a CW event. SOTA activators make up about 1/3 of the QRPTTF participants.

My vote is to split them into separate events and keep the focus directly on EU-NA S2S.

73, Barry N1EU

406

Perhaps, but some of us were not able to use SOTAWatch to go S and P. Having a bit of “presence” certainly helped me personally, even though my 30W out produced little more than an S point over 5W output.

73, Gerald G4OIG

407

SOTAwatch - now there’s something else that’s overrated in this sort of situation. I find constantly checking for spots on there slows me down significantly while activating. With only having one band at my disposal, I kind of knew that all the SOTA activity would be in the 14.055 - 14.065MHz CW and 14.280 - 14.340MHz SSB ranges - so just hunted around there when I wasn’t running my own QRG.

1 Like