we held S5 SOTA/POTA activators meeting last weekend. We made a competition of equipment that activators use.
As this was first such a competition we were just weighting HF equipment that activators use, from radio, antenna, battery and down to the pencil. Yes, we realize that there could be many other criteria to compare to so I wonder what are your thoughts what to compare at our meeting next year? Is it TX power, is it RF field that antenna radiates on a certain distance, is it number of QSOs/reached distance made in a certain time…So would SSB contact count same as CW contact or should we make SSB and CW&SSB categories?
What about VHF FM SOTA users - what to compare in that category? Most of these users use Baofengs and other radios where it’s hard to compare.them. They weigh nearly same, antennas are virtually same, so do you have any thoughts what would be reasonably fair comparison?
Well, nobody else has yet offered an opinion, so I’ll put in my 2 cents’ worth before anybody else.
You mention “weighting” where I think you may have meant “weighing”:
weighing: finding out how many grams or kg a device weighs;
weighting: establishing where some thing lies on a subjective scale with regard to other, similar, things: usefulness, price, features, availabilty, etc.
But of course both of these would be important in evaluating devices for use in SOTA.
Of the other options you mention, I would think the RF field (radiation pattern?) might be the least important, since so many factors outside the influence of the device or the operator will affect it.
As to the VHF FM issue, I would guess the biggest factors there would be:
how well the radio front-end can suppress out-of band signals
antenna, antenna, antenna.
I’m sure other, more experienced activators will add their own views to this.
Hi Rob and Armin,
sure it was meant weighing of equipment
How to compare antena of radio front-end at VHF SOTA users unless we have a lot of measuring equipment? One thing is certain: all cheap walkie-talkies get deaf in the presence of strong nearby signal. We could emulate that with another strong transmiter.
How to make propositions for being innovative? I like fastest QRV idea though - that is a great proposal. We measure time from a start to send CQ either SSB or CW to the air.
Any other suggestions?
73s de S52CQ, Jure
Participants show their ideas to make SOTA easier / better / more effective… and everyone writes down on a piece of paper which is the best idea and then the votes are counted.
AND: I would love it …if you could write a report about the meeting here… that will certainly be interesting
Hi Armin,
yes an interesting suggestion, I will keep that in mind. The meeting was interesting, It started on Friday afternoon when we raised a tend that was intended for those who wanted to make QSOs as the location was POTA location (https://gremovhribe.si/sl/izleti/planinski-dom-na-smohorju): Parks on the Air | POTA
We raised also a couple of antennas and made some comparison, also we compared a couple of radios.
We held few lectures about MMANA-GAL and RSP1A.
Next day we’ve got again few lectures including one about equipment for work through QO-100 satellite and then we held competition in two categories: single band and all bands.
I made POTA activation through QO-100, got a true pile-up and made QSOs from Brazil down to India. I worked on equipment designed/owned by S52ME (see attached image)
All in all it was a great experience. We could not pick other date due to our other activities hence a lot of S5 HAMs were out for Field day.
That’s a shot report…
