With heavy rain forecast today I wasnt going to travel far. The latest forecast was for heavy showers so I settled on a pointless (for me) activation of my local summit G/SP-004 Shining Tor. On arrival at the summit I met James G7MLO & Tom M3XFG who were on 2m FM. After setting up for 2m SSB I beamed to DL to try & work Lutz on DM/RP-001. Nothing heard from Lutz although I could hear DR2010N from Essen at 5/7. Just as I was about to change to HF Lutz called in & the contact was made, 701km on 2m ssb under flat conditions, then the qsb struck so I dont know if Jörg was calling me. I did monitor for a while with the beam towards DL.
I qsyd to HF doing 40/20m then rounded off with another go on 2m both FM/SSB. In all, 122 qsos with 17 s2s contacts. Todays lizard count was 2 seen & 1 caught for closer inspection. Lots of swallows seen (my first this year) - out again tomorrow somewhere wx permitting.
Thanks to all callers. 73.
ps wx was nice sunny spells with 13 - 14C
pps nice to hear some Es on 10m
In reply to G1INK:
Nice big thundery shower over North Wales right now, Steve, just past its peak!
My first swallow was April 15th and first swift April 26th - but no lizards!
I listened for you on 40 and 20 but only heard your customers, sounded like a good day.
73
Brian G8ADD
In reply to G1INK:
ps wx was nice sunny spells with 13 - 14C
The weather turned out to be worse than forecast for me.
It was just like you said for me too, when I set off up-hill @ 10:00 (local time) to Moel y Gamelin GW/NW-042 and all was well…
…until about 13:00 (local time) when it clouded over, got much colder, winder and started with a few big spots of rain. By 13:30 I was being pelted by hailstones and everything was getting a good soaking so I went QRT.
45 minutes later I was back at the Ponderosa Cafe and spotted a car parked near mine with more aerials and a SOTA sticker in the window but its owner was unseen and remains a mystery!
Thanks for S2S on 40m Steve,
Dave, G7SKR.
In reply to G1INK:
It was a hard work to get all the equipment on the Hohe Acht DM/RP-001 and we needed two times walking from the car park to the tower at the summit. Jörg DL1DLF built up his HF PSK/SSTV rig and I started cq-ing on 2m SSB beaming to England on 144.330 at 9:55 UTC. My calls were answered by two DL stations and we had long QSO’s till 10:46. All the time beaming to NW no station was heard from the UK. Then I made QSY and was looking over the band as I found you on 144.310 in a QSO. I called in and we made the contact! Thank you very much for the S2S on VHF over 701 km! Jörg was busy on HF PSK and he has not called you.
We were QRV till 13:20 UTC and some QSO’s followed to DL, OK and F. Best DX was our QSO from G/SP-004 Shining Tor to DM/RP-001 Hohe Acht!
Equipment used: IC-735, LT-2S, HL-180V PA, 13,5V 20AH LiPO-NiMH battery,
120W into 12dB 10ele Yagi with RX mast-preamplifier
about 3 hours QRV but only 10 contacts in the log…next time I will be back on HF! The S2S contact on VHF was made.
Some pics I will upload to Flickr soon.
73
Lutz