In reply to JG1XMV:
If that day we activate two reference during the morning a joy.
73 “” EC2AG
In reply to EC2AG:
Hi guys, another vid, this one from one of our rare QSOs on 40m for the day. Thierry (F4EGG) was the kind cameraman. A QSO with a view!
Yes Mike, the knee will take a while to heal.
Antonio, I’ll be expecting 2 more S2S this Wednesday from you! 
73,
Arnaud
1 Like
In reply to JG1XMV:
Ok Arnaud, but now it will be impossible with me, we are working … maybe Saturday ???
Sure I’ll be active in some summit Pais Vasco
73 “” EC2AG
Something weird is going on with this thread, Mike’s post seems to have disappeared. My reply was below:
Hi Mike, It was a pleasure working you today once again. Your signal was a stunner as always. I am not sure what you feed your antenna but it is some yummy stuff for sure.
Figuring out the antenna SWR and propagation was interesting today once again. The SWR did change with the ground’s humidity. We also had our best string of QSOs early in the morning when the ground was the dampest. Then it tapered off. Maybe it is a coincidence but it is a learning process.
We’re not sure what happened with the 1st 817. Later on we realized that the small buffer battery was generating noise and potentially was messing up with the 817. We could hear a hissing sound. We removed it and got our power straight from the solar panel and the noise went away. We never had that problem before, maybe the charge controller becomes less efficient once the buffer battery is way full. Not sure. We’ll keep an eye out on that one.
I managed to do a QSO with VE3VEE on 5w which was quite nice. Early in the morning it seems that we had a couple of VK1 calling but we missed them, it would have been awesome. I’ll try to post a vid of what our summit qth and the surroundings looked like.
73,
Arnaud
In reply to JG1XMV:
Hello Arnaud, yes weird scenes inside the goldmine…
Just had our evening meal and came here to shut things down.
No I ran out of RF grease so just natural propagation. I think your 5w makes a difference from 2w though.
The hissing sound could arise from the cells or even the connections.
Hopefully the VK1’s will say they at least heard, they were calling you ~ assuming they were SOTA people.
Well done on the VE3 contact - good from home let alone qrp on a summit!
Have you kept the stones that pinned the solar panels down or perhaps something else in the future
100% Night night now
and thank you both.
Mike
In reply to G6TUH:
I was hearing Arnaud - very difficult copy and he was in and out of the noise, but had no joy getting through the pileup. A G station (I think) tried to relay, but unfortunately Arnaud was dissapearing into the noise making it pointless to continue calling.
If Arnaud was running a bit more power and a decent antenna it would have made it a lot easier to have heard him properly and also worked him!
Matt
VK1MA
In reply to VK1MA:
Hello Matt,
I heard two VK1 stations calling in. I don’t relay callsigns.
I will let an activator know, if I can, that an outside EU station is trying to be heard - eg. JA calling you, VK calling you. It works most of the time.
I did let them know VK were calling (on air) and also a msg.
A bit unfair to say about antenna and power. They did work DX so just bad luck that propagation did not favour VK F. Always another day Matt
Cheers
Mike
In reply to VK1MA:
Hi Matt,
I know it is disappointing to miss such a great QSO. Thierry and I would have truly loved to work you, trust me on that one! We run QRP on purpose as it allows us to limit the weight we carry on our shoulders. The F/AM-142 activation we did has about 700m of positive vert and our packs were fairly heavy (maybe around 25kgs each). When I checked my GPS, the total cumulative vert for the day was 825m (given the ups & downs along the way). Given we’re not 100% health-wise we’re not keen to carry an amp or a gigantic antenna. Sometimes we carry multiple antennas and do some testing (Buddipole, Buddistick, ATAS 25, BNC 750) but it is already quite heavy to carry all this gear. To be fair, even if we were 100% health-wise we’d still stick to QRP and small antennas to limit the weight and allow us to go further and higher.
We’re also in the learning phase when it comes to SOTA. I am sure we will get better as time goes by, and we’ve already learnt quite a few things along the way. At the end of the day I think it will be a much higher achievement from your standpoint to be able to work us when we’re using 5w with a small antenna than 100w or more with a tower.
I have seen that you’re a very active chaser so I am looking forward to working you, I am sure we will manage sooner or later. As a matter of fact, Thierry and I are thinking to try to reach summits earlier to see if it helps us to make some QSOs with the VKs in terms of propagation. We’ll keep everybody posted on that one.
Obviously we’ll be wx-dependant as always (it snowed at 2800m last night) as the summer weather has been brutal here this year both in terms of precipitations and temperatures.
73,
Arnaud
F/JG1XMV