Some more obscure suggestions likely to end up with me being put in a headlock and dragged away to an awaiting Bedford Rascal for a hiding. 
Or, as Sputnik turns 70 in 2027 you could do 70cm satellite QSO’s with an HT and a yagi? Time would be just one of probably a jillion issues though. Just brainfarting this stuff.
70cm ATV/DTV - 434,000 - 434,594 or FM AFSK 433.400
70cm SSTV - 433.400
70cm RTTY - 433.100
I wonder how you’d do a 70cm ATV SOTA activation? Especially an ATV pile up. 
Things have moved on, currently I have 226 DXCC worked on 60m and I’ve a way to go yet 
Declan EI6FR
It may be the same thing, Declan - I was referring to countries in the sense of administrations: for instance the UK is one administration but several DXCCs.
I agree. But I think the best way to approach it is not to see it as a competition, but rather as an encouragement to do things you wouldn’t otherwise do. And not taking part in the challenge is totally fine too.
I gave the 10m challenge a try a few times and had fun with it! The V/UHF challenge… not for me. I completely ignored it.
However, I like the idea of building a simple CW transceiver for the lower bands. Even if you don’t make loads of QSOs, it’s still an interesting project!
Me too. So I hope the 2028 challenge is announced early enough so that we have enough time to do this before 1/1/28.
2028 Challenge: ALL THE SUMMITS ALL THE TIME
The challenge is to accumulate the most points by activating SOTA summits. The difference is a summit can be scored more than once per year. Activate Ben Nevis 10 times in one year? That would be 100 challenge points.
That isn’t really a challenge though. It doesn’t get you doing something you wouldn’t otherwise have done. This year’s challenge got me doing 2m SSB, I made an antenna, I took part in a backpacker’s contest. The 10m challenge got me using the band on a regular basis.
Yeah, thanks to this year’s Challenge I’ve:
… but not yet done a VHF activation. 
So full marks for getting me doing stuff… 
It does get activators doing something different… It gets activators out to do summits they have already done and otherwise would have not bothered with again for another year.
Ugh! You mean, like DIGITAL? I do have principles! 
Hmmm.
Please tell me more.
If you want to get out in front of me (Yes, I’m slow :-), I’m getting my inspiration here: VK1SV 136 kHz MEPT description and here: Regenerative Receivers
The whole thing should be do-able for under 10 bucks. On 630 mtrs, 7.600 MHz crystals can be had for pennies on Aliexpress. Divide by 16 lands us on 475. On 2200 mtrs, 2.176 MHz crystals can be had for pennies. Divide by 16 lands us on 138. There might be some benefit in all of us landing on the same frequencies?
It doesn’t have to be that way. For a while, I also operated on the 80m band—specifically around midday. I used my standard 20m-long EFHW antenna with a 1:49 transformer.
On 80m, that configuration acts as a quarter-wave radiator with a theoretically low impedance, making it completely unsuitable when paired with a 1:49 transformer. However, it turned out that the KX2 tuner matched it without any issues, and the results were astonishing, depending on conditions. *)
I frequently made contact with Fried (DL1FU, 180km), occasionally with Fred (DL8DXL, 300km), and several times with Lars (SA4BLM, 1000km)—and even managed a contact as far away as Ukraine. All of this happened around midday with 10W and of course in CW.
I also compared that “small” EFHW with a proper 40m radiator while working with Lars. The difference—amounting to just 1 or 2 S-units—was surprisingly small.
73 Chris
*) The coaxial cable serving as a counterpoise—measuring only 9 meters in length—shift the resonance well above 3.5 MHz. Consequently, the complex impedance rises significantly above the nearly purely resistive 73 ohms of a resonant dipole. This applies to the other bands (60m, 30m, 17m, and 12m) as well, all of which I can tune and operate successfully with the EFHW. I suspect that the transformer transforms the complex impedance of the untuned antenna to a lower range, where capacitive losses—particularly within the coaxial cable—are reduced.
Points for each band and mode you qualify the summit on.
I wrote something for club newsletters, but it needs an update. I’ll drop a copy in a new thread in a day or three when it’s done.
By all means suggest, discuss, theorise and eulogise about different operating ideas but can I remind everyone that there are a few criteria for challenges.
Don’t get swept up in the word “challenge”. It basically means people will be doing something that the vast majority of SOTA participants are not normally doing. It doesn’t mean challenging as in difficult. Such as activators having to ride a pogo stick when operating!
And just because there may not be an official challenge that doesn’t mean other events cannot be run on a regular basis. I’m intrigued by some LFer activating on 630m. So having a number of LFer activity weekends on a regular basis, say once / month, sounds appealing.
I agree with others who said:
That would mean thinking of something else for 2028.
I see several challenges with low-band HF for SOTA activations:
a) To get any real distance or high contact counts on 160m and 80m, activators have to be on summits during dawn, dusk, or total darkness when the D-layer vanishes. This requires careful summit selection and winter gear, as operating on a freezing, dark peak is a safety challenge in itself.
b) Many of us have 160m only on some rigs. In my case, that’s a FT817, 5W CW and no ATU. So, that means deploying a resonant 160m inverted-V on a standard 10m pole. That introduces physical and electrical hurdles that make it very difficult on a windy and/or dark summit .
c) Low-band HF is plagued by RFI from modern electrical appliances, making home-based daytime chasing very hard. I get S9++ noise at home on those bands.
d) For those of us who hill-walk & activate during hours of daylight, strong D-layer absorption is likely to rule out skywave and NVIS propagation on 160m. Groundwave propagation, especially in hilly terrain (like G/LD), usually restricts coverage to 10 to 45 miles . For groundwave, you would be better off using a vertically polarised antenna over an extensive ground radial system—which would be time-consuming to set up on a summit and highly inefficient without an ATU to match the narrow bandwidth.
The 2026 challenge favours those who live near large centres of population.
Also, the database reveals it hasn’t been taken up at all in some areas. Looking at the US, populous states have done well. More remote ones haven’t anything registered.
Personally, I have done less 2m SSB this year because of the challenge.
2028 needs to be something you can do with an HF radio and not much else. SSTV can be done from a phone these days. 
I’ve chased a number of top band activations on SSB, many of them above 1.850 with just my maximum 30 watts, using a 40m long doublet at 9m and a tuner. The early ones were with just 5 watts (FT817) and a tuner to a G5RV wired as a doublet also only 9m high. That suggests to me that it is quite doable if you are equipped to be on a suitable summit after dark. If you are prepared to use a tuner you have more options than a dipole. I should add that at this location, for some reason top band is much quieter than 80m - which seems odd but I am not complaining! 