How would you fancy a 160m or 80m contact this coming Thursday evening??
Well, there is a possibility if you have enough wire in your garden, or fancy going /p! My good friend Kevin @MW0KXN and I GW4BML, will be attempting to climb Cadair Idris GW/NW-009, and plan to be on summit approx 19:30 UTC this Thursday night.
We will begin on 145-FM, hoping to qualify, and then chuck the 80m of wire in the sky to work top band and 80m, both SSB & CW!
Mid-week madness is back for one time only this summer our diaries have aligned at last!
It would be great to work some stations from the SOTA community - we will spot on every frequency we call out on.
My LDG Z11 Pro II ATU refuses to load up my homemade 80-10m OCFD shack antenna on 160m. I can chase you from home on 80m SSB and/or CW. However, it would be more fun to do a S2S from a local SOTA. The problem is a suitable 160m antenna (ready by Thursday) ā I donāt have one.
I read there are a couple of āsweet spotā lengths for an end-fed long wire for 160m but anything less than about 60m long and the efficiency is poor and it dissipates too much power in the 9:1 (49:1) balun. So, one might as well go for a halfwave end-fed or centre-fed.
My spreadsheet says one needs ~79.2m of wire for a CFD (resonant at 1835kHz) but I donāt have that much spare antenna wire. So, Iāve looked at adding āwingsā to my existing 80/60/40m centre-fed linked dipole (which I use as inverted-V with an 8m pole in the middle). Got enough wire. But then I noticed my homemade QRP 1:1 balun. Canāt remember the wire gauge I used but I doubt it would like 50+W of SSB through it.
So, sadly Iām gonna give up on doing Topband and stick to what I know works on 80m, my existing linked dipole with 10W of CW or SSB from my KX2. Storm Floris has passed but we now have several ālowsā near the UK causing this āfreshā breeze on nearby summits. If it calms down for Thursday evening, Iāll activate otherwise Iāll chase from home.
I used to work top band successfully using a G5RV as a doublet by extending the ladder line. I replaced it with a 40m long doublet and only noticed a slight improvement. I wouldnāt worry too much about efficiency - in the days when top band was the preferred band for /M those centre-loaded long whips did surprisingly well!
Thanks for the heads up Ben. I will be on 80m SSB and CW.
I suggest you carry a copy of your licence, I was challenged by the local (volunteer) park warden on my activation last year.
David
G0EVV
Iām not quite up to venturing out for the nocturnal madness yet, but hope to be back from a meeting in time to call in from home. My local noise level seems to have improved in recent months, perhaps as people move onto fibre Internet connectionsā¦
Luxury! I have S9+ noise on 160m and 80m at my QTH so I can chase only strong signals.
We had a village-wide power cut earlier this week. I checked the lower HF bands with my battery-powered KX2 and it was S0, no digital hash only atmospheric background noise. For a few hours there were no RFI-generating electrical appliances in the neighbourhood. Thank goodness 98% of my radio activity is SOTA activating
Hope to be on 40m, 60m and 80m low power CW/SSB on G/LD-052 ~1900utc tonight.
Rod, hope to work you on 10W of SSB.
BTW: For 60m SSB I usually try 5395.0 or 5403.5 USB
A useful opportunity to check - but disappointing when it all goes back to normal. S5+ is the local low - probably ADSL - but it reaches well over S9 when one of my chargers is running
I intend starting with 60m - probably 5.3715 but will look for you on your suggested QRGs. Power probably 4W on 60 (QMX so I will have to remember to set USB) but the 857 will come out for 80 and 160 so probably 15W and maybe more if the SWR is OK without the ATU.
It was great making it with you on both 80 and 160 despite punishing noise levels. Thanks guys, I havenāt felt up to fighting the noise since May, this encourages me to re-enter the fray! Incidentally, I also could hear both M0JLA and G8CPZ on 80 but too deep in the S9 noise to workā¦a lot from a nearby floodlight in a club carpark.
I heard you very faintly on 80m, but too weak to copy unfortunately. By the time you were on 160, it was bedtime here hi. Hope to work you next time with better propagation!
I thought it would be a failed activation. I was getting frustrated as the pole fell over at least six times in the strong wind whilst erecting the 80/60/40 linked dipole. I was unable to get the guying pegs into the very rocky summit of G/LD-056 and had to use rocks instead.
(C) Google Earth 2025, ADIF Processor courtesy M0NOM
Nice to have S0 noise on the lower HF bands, such a change from my QTH. The only readability problem was the deep QSB. And happy with reports given for my 10W of SSB.
Chilly sitting in the strong wind without shelter despite sweating in the warm sunshine on the ascent. I managed to get down in the fading light 20-30 minutes after sunset without resorting to using the torch. Good fun.
You all sounded to be having a great time. I was more than chuffed getting M0JLA, G8CPZ, GW4BML/P and MW0KXN/P using an aerial which Iād thrown up for the event. It was also my first 160m contact with possibly the most inefficent piece of wire used last night:-). I canāt get my head around how you managed to erect a 160m aerial on a summit.
Well done all of you on your night time activation.
73 de Steve
Thanks for the contacts on 160m Ben & Kevin. You were great signals on 160m over here near Cambridge, some slow QSB but a good 55 up to 59. In fact you were stronger with me on 160m than 80m, I can only image the fun getting all that wire up in the air
The noise floor here is a little lower on 160 than 80 and noise in general is getting better as more of my neighbours move from VDSL to FTTP.
our diaries have aligned at last!
