What a brilliant day for HF working on SOTA today. 10 metres was open into parts of Europe from northern England, with HB9BIN, OH9XX, F4ESK logged. Even VK6JON/P (SOTA man from near Perth) was logged at 1005z on short path. I had a rag chew with Jon on 10m, unfortunately he was not on a summit!
I hope my signal was not attenuated by the many starlings that were frequenting my antenna today, seen here just after 1400z:
73 de Phil
What a great picture! Ha ha!
Donāt they give gain when they all point the right way?
Very nice pic, Phil,
Who said ham radio antennas are ugly?
Some out there love themā¦
EA2IFās in QTH of Aranjuez-Madrid
EA2LUās 6m band beam in Pamplona
Cheers,
Guru
They also stopped here in South of France.
Lots of birdies, but still worked them Phil 
Phil, you obviously were not running enough power to drive them off. But at least they are not a destructive bird like the cockyās here in VK are (they have big strong beaks and enjoy chewing on poor defenceless coaxial cables). I guess it would be advisable not to park your car or walk under the antenna when they are perched thereā¦
Matt
VK1MA
Talking of birds
And nice photos of some cracking antennas ( Green with envy LOL )
And chasing yep was good on air between 0830 till just after mid day 73 points and 11 sota,s worked on 40 20 15 and 10m. Ed twice on 40 and 10 and a OK sota on ten again.
But in recent weeks have noticed during dusk a lone black bird popping on top of me 21ft support pole doing his evening spring call. Been so mild down here even daffodils are in full flower.
Karl
Hmm, only the one summit chased today - 37 degrees celcius (over 40 in other parts of SE VK), severe fire risk, local total fire ban = minimal activations. Add to that poor RF conditions and high QRM at my QTH and I missed out on the other two activators in VK3 and ZL. A good day to sit inside and enjoy the airconditioning.
Matt
VK1MA
11:00 it all kicked off 8 summits with an hour
More bloody rain, swear were going to float away here, trying to send to your direction to help with fires.
Good day stay indoors out of the rain again
Karl
I guess that makes him a peak-ing duck 
Your photo reminded me of the Tony Hancock sketch from donkeyās years ago Phil - āIāll stick a few hundred volts upā em - that should make their feet tingleā.
Incidentally, there may have been propagation to your part of the North of England, but there was absolutely no trace of HB9BIN or the other stations at this location (not for the first time !!).
Nice antenna system by the way - makes my very,very low 3 ele 10m only yagi look rather insignificant by comparison.
Regards,
Mike G4BLH
What with all this 10m boast-fest going on, I was looking forward to going up Shining Tor G/SP-004 this afternoon. Jimmy M0HGY checked the weather forecast and bailed out as soon as the Met Office website informed him it wasnāt midsummers day - ie the temperature was less than 20 degrees Celcius and the wind was above zero. Silly boy, it was a super day for walking and playing radio.
I met Jonathan G2HFR at the Cat & Fiddle - which itself was closed āuntil further noticeā. No reasons given, and the closure was taking lots of bikers by surprise. Dozens of them arrived and were disappointed just in the few minutes I was putting my boots on.
Well, on the summit, 10m was not as advertised above. There wasnāt a single signal of any mode anywhere across 28MHz and 29MHz. In the end I self-spotted on SSB (after doing so on CW resulted in zilch), and worked 9 chasers, all of whom would have been in 70cm FM range. Jonathan did a load on 60m and possibly 40m, before using my set-up to collect his Challenge multiplier and a few more unique callsigns.
The greater pleasure from the activation was the chat with Jonathan on both legs of the walk.
Another morning trot up The Cloud G/SP-015 on Monday 21st December 2015. 10m was a little more lively. Noy much, bit something at least. 6 QSOs on 10m CW (4X, EA, G, RA, UR) and 1 on 10m SSB (UR).
As my antenna was the custom-built 10m/6m GP vertical with trap, from SOTAbeams, I had a little listen on 6m, but there was nothing there. The unexpected but highly convenient bonus with this antenna is that it works really well on 2m. So without any adjustment or swapping of antennas or feeders, I went straight onto VHF and added 9 stations on 2m FM.
Iām going to see if I can keep up with an activation per day throughout the festive holiday period. Doing so in the past has been surprisingly effective at aiding weight loss and improving fitness - ie way faster than one would have thought. As Iām no longer in a work situation where it is easy and convenient to fit an activation into work days as a matter of course, it needs a more determined effort and I must take opportunities in holiday periods like this.
So hopefully another round tomorrow morning.
Hi Tom
Thanks for the 10m QSO yesterday. It was a struggle to work you but we got there in the end.
I expect you are doing really well on the 10m/6m activator side of the challenge and may even be āWorld Topā for all I know as I have just noticed you havenāt put any 10m/6m logs into the database since the winter section of the challenge started up again. So it is difficult to see where you are in the overall table for the challenge as you must have accrued a lot more than the 25245 points you have currently claimed. This lack of transparency means the other high scoring activator challengers who submit their scores to the database immediately must be guessing where they stand in the overall placings!
73 Phil
I keep meaning to catch up Phil, but then I keep finding more important things to do, or that I just canāt be bothered. Good job thereās no rule about how fast you have to put your logs in!
Tend to put mine in on the day or as go along unless out on summit.
Another good day here chasing.
5 x DL, 2 x OE plus F, SV, YO & YU Sotaās clocked today on 40m and 20m
Better get on with me paper log now done me Sota Log, QRZ Log & Eqsl log 
Karl
Yeah, Phil is referring to my summit activations.
