Here we are at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. Over 170 spots today on sotawatch, but not a single G station. Is the wx really bad or something? It’s nice and sunny here on the East coast if a little breezy. Personally I tend to favour activating uniques which explains my own lack of activity. Any other observations?
It’s nice and sunny here on the East coast if a little breezy.
Whereas it’s hammering it down over here in the land of G SOTA summits. Come back to Buxton Steve, you know you miss it hi!
Not too bad in GW/NW.
With all the pent-up demand I’m expecting lots of calls for the 144-MHz Backpackers contest tomorrow. 
We all have our excuses.
Indeed,
Or it could be an observable trend, not helped by declining HF conditions.
We’re not up a hill because it is a long drive back from Skye - over 7 hours just to get back to the border. We had hoped to hear some SOTA stations on our way south but having driven through some torrential showers are not surprised nobody is out.
What’s your theory anyway Steve?
Mine is increasing age!
In terms of the numbers of activating participants that are active we have:
Year…number of activators
…G…GW…GM…GI
2002…24…5…3…1
2003…48…10…9…1
2004…100…11…17…2
2005…121…17…17…2
2006…147…17…22…4
2007…153…15…26…4
2008…169…14…28…3
2009…178…16…35…4
2010…199…26…35…4
2011…231…32…40…6
2012…215…36…35…6
2013…202…32…40…7
2014…191…25…40…6
2015…196…22…35…6
Just looking at England, and taking an active participant as somebody who will score at least 100 points in a year, we see the following numbers of 100+ points activators:
2002…5
2003…9
2004…15
2005…21
2006…27
2008…33
2009…31
2010…33
2011…33
2012…26
2013…32
2014…27
2015…27
Although activity in England was higher in 2008-2011 it has been fairly constant at a lower level since. It would be nice to see a rising trend but perhaps with an ageing ham population this is too much to expect!
Brian
No theory, just making an observation. I could understand the lack of activity on a weekday - but on a Saturday?
From my persprective Steve, I prefer not to activate at the weekend because it is usually busy with other walkers. So I tend to work weekends and have my days off in the week. Look out for me on GW/NW-001 Monday 11 Jul.
73 Glyn
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It’s VHF NFD this weekend, a lot of SOTA activators are involved with their local clubs in the competition.
73, Colin
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Just re-checked the spots, not a single G activation all day!! Hi. Caroline, hope you and Martyn enjoyed Skye. Sorry we didn’t have our usual GM-DM s2s this year, my dog is nearly 18 and I can’t really get away as I can’t put him in kennels. Maybe next year, ttfn.
Well, John broke the duck with an evening activation from G/NP-008 using GX0OOO/P, I got him on 160m SSB so I’m a bit chuffed!
Brian
Freezing cold in VK1 - it was minus 5 this morning and hardly any VK activations. I think I put the low activity levels in VK1 down to the fact that 3 of our more frequent activators are away - 1AD, 1DA and 1FJAW are all overseas or in the process of returning. The sky being profoundly broken doesn’t help either!
I am about to head out to do a WWFF activation to test out the new FT-857 but not overly hopeful of getting many contacts - 40m is really long at the moment, hearing stations over 3000km away but nothing in the more ‘local’ area.
Matt
VK1MA
Some activations go under the radar so to speak. Last Sunday, I hopped onto Ruardean Hill following May Hill.
I wasn’t sure whether to include it in my travels, so posted no alert. On arrival, I found that there was no phone signal (despite wandering around and climbing on walls etc), so I couldn’t spot.
No takers on 2m FM, so I resorted to calling CQ on 30m. Eventually I scraped four contacts, but no spots.
As the rain started, and I hurried to take a quick photo with my phone before packing up, I noticed it was showing two bars of signal Gahh!
Playing VHF NFD this weekend, with GW3SRT.
73
Adrian
G4AZS
Down road at out fav cafe in Cornwall 
Chequered Flag cafe.
No radio yesterday for me 
Karl
I think a lot do. Often current spots for CW activations seem to dominate, frequently there is nothing but CW spots, but when you look at the statistics it shows more activity on SSB and the CW activity is about the same as FM. If you look at the figures for 2015 there were 1298 activators logging contacts on SSB, 702 on CW and 1239 on FM, if you take the figures for people scoring at least 100 points you have 226 on SSB, 180 on CW and 178 on FM. I conclude that many phone activations go unspotted, particularly FM activations.
It may well turn out that yesterdays dearth of UK spots does not mean that there were no activations, just nobody spotted them.
Brian
Hi Steve.
Yes, I have noted a lack/drop off in UK activity but some activators have been doing a wonderful job of putting on some much sought after summits during the last few weeks.
I suppose I’m gulity of not being active lately but I’ve been suffering from a little bit of post Mountain Goat syndrome here in West Wales…the push to get past 1000 points during the winter months was tiring especially not being as young as I used to be 
Also the push to get MG meant that a few building/refurb projects were put on the back burner but now have had to be tackled…hope to be back on the hills in the next few weeks (long list of uniques/completes ready).
I agree with many of the posts above and also not so long ago a text/e-mail of intended activation to fellow GW / G activators followed by an alert would trigger a spate of alerts and the ensuing s2s party…let’s hope we can get back to that shortly.
I’ve also noticed here in GW that we have had quite a few young amateurs activate a summit or two and are full of enthusiasm for SOTA then they disappear…I wonder why?
At the moment quite a few of us in Wales have activated all our close summits during winter bonus so uniques/completes mean travelling a greater distance with maybe time / accommodation implications etc. hence a drop off in activity…maybe?
Just a few of my thoughts…
73 Allan GW4VPX
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Plenty of spots today for SOTA activity in the UK. Personally I thought the UK SOTA people were sensible not to do any SOTA activations yesterday due to bad weather, but to go out activating today instead as weather is nicer.
Jimmy M0HGY
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I agree Jimmy. As simple as that.
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