SOTA NEWS MARCH 2016 - Part 2 of 2
SOTA NORTH AMERICA REPORT by Skip K6DGW
Greetings All:
Probably the biggest news from NA SOTA this month is the weather on the eastern half of the continent. It has been hugely fierce and damaging, and no doubt contributed to the slight decline in SOTA activity.
NORTH AMERICA TOTALS
Total Activations: 288 [351]
Nr Unique Activators: 121 [126]
Total Chaser QSOs: 4089 [5206]
Nr Unique Chasers: 239 [250]
Unique Summits: 192 [232]
2m: 168 (4%) [99]
6m: 1 (0%) [3]
10m: 89 (2%) [143]
12m: 4 (0%) [4]
15m: 261 (6%) [309]
17m: 329 (8%) [374]
20m: 2174 (53%) [2875]
30m: 382 (9%) [387]
40m: 680 (16%) [964]
60m: 0 (0%) [0]
80m: 0 (0%) [0]
160m: 0 (0%) [0]
Unk: 1
CW: 2438 (59%) [2798]
SSB: 1482 (36%) [2262]
FM: 166 (4%) [134]
AM: 0 (0%) [4]
Data: 0 (0%) [1]
Other: 1 (0%) [2]
Unk: 1
I’m a little unsure of the “Last Month’s” numbers, I may have fouled up the statistics script due to a technical difficulty in my mind …
One “Busted Q” from last month: I suggested that the 4 AM QSO’s were really just typo’s while entering logs. Alas, not so … they were real, full-carrier, double sideband, amplitude modulation S2S QSO’s that took place on 70 cm [of all places] during the “Big Bend Bash,” using FT-817’s.
L-R in photo: Mike, KD5KC; Scott, AK5SD; Curtis, KC5CW; Dave, KG5EIU; and Andrew, KD5ZZK.
NEWS: I didn’t get any notifications of new awards this month.
Guy, N7UN; Elliott, K6EL; and Paul, W6PNG [new W6 Association Manager] (photo above), completed the catalog of the new W6 summits [see photo]. Elliott reports that there are now over 4,400 SOTA summits in W6. It will likely be a bit before all of the new ones appear in the database.
Eric, KU6J [SK] told me some time ago that no one in California was more than 42 miles from a SOTA summit.
Oleh, KD7WPJ reports: “Michael, KX6A, and two of his sons - Will, N6WMG, and Nick, N6NGG, activated 2 Transverse Ranges summits on February 15, 2016. If you work all 3 family members during your activation (which I did on 2 m FM from San Gabriel Peak) - you have three of the four QSO’s for your own activation. Let’s hope that Michael’s third son will be able to get his license soon and Michael and family will then provide all 4 QSO’s from one summit.”
Scott, K7ZO, has prepared an NA SOTA Summary for 2015. He writes, "I recently uploaded to the Files [NA SOTA Yahoo Group] section a document I put together reviewing SOTA activity in North America during 2015. By examining the log files of top chasers I was able to gain insight into topics such as:
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How many summits were activated in 2015 – in total and by summit point value
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How many total points were available for chasers.
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What were the top months and days of the week for chasers to accumulate points
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How many activations were there in each state – and which states had the most activations in total and as a % of their total summits.
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Which summits were activated the most times.
If you are interested in this sort of thing, head over to the Files section and grab a copy of the PDF."
It’s always great to welcome new folk to SOTA, especially so when they’re already a friend. George, KJ6VU, and some Bay-Net friends over in Silicon Valley joined the SOTA fraternity. His report: “Bay-Net conducted a SOTA expedition to a 1 point ‘summit’ called Coyote Peak NC-399. After a brutal 1 mile hike we made it to the summit where we joked that it was a great site if only we could get Google or Amazon to drop a pizza via drone.” Let’s hope we see more of this group! There is a SOTA summit in the San Francisco Bay area with a Taco Bell inside the AZ.
The “Big Bend Bash”: A SOTA expedition took place in mid-January to the Big Bend area of Texas which included Mike, KD5KC; Scott, AK5SD; Curtis, KC5CW, Dave, KG5EIU; and Andrew, KD5ZZK. For those not familiar with Texas topography, Big Bend is a very large area in southwest Texas which is home to a number of W5T summits … and not much else except wildlife. 
The Big Bend National Park covers more than 800,000 acres
[324,000 Ha] and is extremely rugged. The Rio Grande and Mexico form it’s western border.
Elliott, K6EL, forwarded the following URL, an article by Tim, KG7EJT, which appeared in Mountaineer Magazine. I’ll bet there are a few mountaineers thinking about a license right now!
Finally, the Report of the Month from Brad, WA6MM: “I’ve been enjoying some downhill skiing with my XYL the past month and started to feel the withdrawal symptoms from no SOTA activations. So, I decided to activate Chalk Mountain (W0C/SR-136) at 12,012 ft [3,662 m] here in Colorado. This would be my first trip with my new ‘spacepen’ following Fred’s (KT5X) advice after having issues with ink not flowing on my last chilly activation.”
"The weather on this trip was pretty good in terms of temperature – somewhere in the low 20’sF [~-7C] at the trail head. The summit was about a 2 hour, 1,600 ft snowshoe climb. Things were going good until I reached the summit ridge. The wind was blowing hard on the ridge and I needed to find some shelter. However, the relatively large flat activation zone didn’t have many trees and the leeward side to the east ended in a corniced cliff of ice and snow. A photo of the AZ is attached.
Chalk Mountain Activation Zone
I found a couple of small trees that provided some shelter and ran my EFHW antenna wire towards the corniced cliff. I stopped about 40 ft from the cliff edge to eliminate the possibility of being on the evening news ;-). I used my hiking pole to anchor the end of the wire."
“So, all was good now and I was QRV. I was able to send out a 17M SSB spot via SOTAGoat. I made five contacts but didn’t have the normal pileup I get on that band. I then started to experience some new issues I hadn’t had before (I’m learning new stuff on every activation these days!!). The blowing snow was collecting on my radio, microphone, iPhone, and paper log. This was a very fine snow that turned to water fairly quickly on my radio. I was wondering how “waterproof” the FT-817 was!! Everything continued to work fine (including my new spacepen) but I discovered my paper log was barely holding up as it was getting wet and the ink was smearing as I entered data.”
“The highlight of this activation was moving to 40M SSB and making nine more contacts. Four of these contacts were local Colorado hams. It’s great to be able to work locals on HF as this peak is not a good VHF summit. There are much higher peaks in all directions.”
“I decided to cut this activation short after only 35-40 minutes as the blowing snow was starting to take it’s toll on my equipment and body.
20 minutes later I was hundreds of feet lower and back in the treeline
– life was back to normal ;-).”
That’s it from the New World for this month.
73,
Skip K6DGW
North American SOTA Reporter Dude
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SOTA NEWS FROM JAPAN - by Toru JH0CJH
SOTA started June 2015 and gradually becoming popular in Japan. SOTA has been promoted in CQ magazine since last October but it was just 2 pages and simply explained its rules and introduced SOTA program itself. This month, we introduced SOTA program in CQ Magazine again. At this time we got 6 pages of article space and posted with collaboration of JP1QEC Akira, JS1UEH Takeshi, JJ1SWI Gou and JH0CJH Toru. This month mainly focused on the fun of HF operation from summits. After this SOTA Japan mailing list members are getting bigger and every day and night hot discussion and information are exchanged.
One of the big discussions in SOTA ML is how to find out new summits not registered in the Database. Japan is one of the countries having a huge number of mountains and summits, then up to now we have found quite a few numbers of un-registered summits by all SOTA lovers map reading. In this discussion, JL1NIE Minoru made automatic summits finding program with JAVA. This program can work with GIS data of landscape with “libtourtre”
contour tree library.
http://graphics.cs.ucdavis.edu/~sdillard/libtourtre/doc/html/
This library and Minoru’s JAVA script find and output all necessary data of summits and col such as altitude, longitude and latitude that is matching with SOTA 150m prominence rules. So far the evaluation and verification of this software is ongoing and very accurate as of current observation. Current 4 SOTA Japan associations have total 5160 summits but already this software program found 2800+ candidates on top of that. We are going to add these 2800+ summits by next SOTA ARM regular revision.
Another topic of Feb 2016, we got visitor from VK Australia. VK2IO Gerard visited Japan and he activated some JA summits. Hope he had a good time in Japan.
SOTA operation February 2016 in Japan
Total number of Expedition 58 with 701 QSO as of 27th Feb 2016. 28th and 29th Feb surely some expedition have been done then final count will be more of them.
JA: 56 expeditions with 671 QSO from Summits
JA5: 2 expeditions with 48 QSO from Summits
JA6: 1 expeditions with 1 QSO from Summits
JA8: 0 expeditions
73
Toru Kawauchi JH0CJH
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SOTA ON TOP BAND - Mark G0VOF
Hello everyone & welcome to this month’s edition of SOTA on Top Band.
Two activators took to Top Band from four summits during February. On the 3rd February John G4YSS operating as GX0OOO/P for the first time this year dropped onto 160m at the end of an activation of G/NP-014 Rogan’s seat. This was an afternoon activation & John started on 80m where he had a very good run of 13 CW QSO’s & 23 SSB QSO’s. Once on 160m with the Sun now setting CW was tried first with 2 QSO’s completed, with Frank G3RMD & Phil G4OBK before a change of mode to SSB. Here a further 6 QSO’s were made with John’s signal reaching as far as Don G0RQL in Devon.
With the temperature dropping & after a nice chat with the gamekeeper John departed the summit, but not after a final call on CW in case I had arrived home from work. Sadly I had not, so I missed John on this summit. Thanks for thinking of me John!
A superbly detailed report can be found here:
G4YSS: NP14 Rogan's Seat, on 80m & 160m (With Dog) 03-02-16
The next activator to try 160m was Miro OK1DVM/P who started his activation of OK/ST-035 Pecný on the evening of Friday 12th February on the band. Miro made 2 QSO’s using CW before moving to 80m where he made 13 QSO’s. I was in the shack that evening but didn’t see Miro’s spot for 1828KHz until about 20 minutes later, by which time he was starting up on 3562KHz CW. Miro was a very good signal & easy copy despite a little QSB. Miro informs me that he was using a KX3 at 10 Watts into an Alex loop on 3.5MHz & a short vertical on 1.8MHz.
Thanks Miro for the information & I Hope to work you on 160m soon!
On Tuesday 23rd February, John G4YSS was out again, this time planning a three or four summit day in the G/NP region with Top Band pencilled in for the first & last summits to take advantage of the better conditions on 160m in the morning / evening. John’s first summit was G/NP-006 Great Shunner Fell & as I had seen John’s alert the night before I was listening in the shack when he first called. Although by this time the sun had not been up for long, conditions seemed poor to me with both John & Phil G4OBK not being as strong as usual, with my local noise also making things a bit of a struggle. From John’s activation report it seems that his first calls were using only 5 Watts, which explains why I struggled to hear him at first.
After first working Phil, then myself, it was nice to hear Roy G4SSH being worked to give John 3 QSO’s using CW. After this John moved up the band to 1843KHz to call on SSB again working Phil G4OBK followed by myself, although the change of mode made things a bit more challenging for me & I could only give John a 33 report. When further calls went unanswered John moved to 80m CW & was a very good signal, but as he already had a few callers & I had to depart for work I didn’t work him on that band. He managed 10 CW QSO’s & 8 SSB QSO’s on 80m.
Later the same day John had settled on G/NP-031 Birks Fell as his final summit & after a good run on 80m CW/SSB & 2m FM John started on 160m CW whilst the sun was setting. John’s first call was answered by Phil G4OBK, followed by Roy G4SSH & Frank G3RMD before more distant stations started to make it into his log, with Sake PA0SKP, Mike DJ5AV both working John. At this point I had arrived in the shack after having made myself Beans on Toast for tea thinking I would be too late for John’s final summit. As it happened I powered up the station & John was still calling so I answered him. Conditions for me were quite poor with increased noise & deep QSB making it a real struggle. I could only give John 339 at first but this improved to 559 by the end of our QSO.
Following me was Karel ON4FI then a real surprise, Dmitri RU3GF in Lipetsk at a distance of around 2700 KM. Once there were no further replies on CW John moved up the band to call on SSB, this time working me then Frank G3RMD in Cheltenham. Again this was a struggle for me with high noise & QSB meaning a report from me of 53-56. With further calls unanswered John packed up & began his descent in darkness.
Again you can find a superb report on these activations here:
G4YSS: NP6, NP15, NP16, NP31 160-80-2m on 23-02-16
Thanks for the excellent activation reports & of course for the 160m QSO’s!
Congratulations & well done John & Miro.
At the time of writing, these were the only Top band activations during February that I am aware of, if I have missed any others please let me know.
On 3 February, John GX0OOO/P (G4YSS) Activated G/NP-014 Rogan’s Seat & made 8 QSO’s (2 CW / 6 SSB)
On 12 February, Miro OK1DVM/P Activated OK/ST-035 Pecný & made 2 QSO’s (2 CW / 0 SSB)
On 23 February, John GX0OOO/P (G4YSS) Activated G/NP-006 Great Shunner Fell & made 5 QSO’s (3 CW / 2 SSB)
On 23 February, John GX0OOO/P (G4YSS) Activated G/NP-031 Birks Fell & made 11 QSO’s (9 CW / 2 SSB)
As always, If you do have any suggestions on things that you think should be included, or if you wish to contribute tips, ideas or anything else that you think may help others on the band please email them to me at mark@brownhill.demon.co.uk
Until next month,
Best 73,
Mark G0VOF
CW REPORT FOR FEBRUARY 2016 By Roy G4SSH
The constant stream of storm force winds and rain racing across the Atlantic limited the number of European activations during the first week of February but Chris DL/ON6ZQ was off on one of his expeditions, this time to Germany using his familiar “UP” method of working.
The Canary Islands proved to be a popular location during the month with at least 4 activators operating from the various islands.
The number of activations increased dramatically as we approached the end of the month, with many, cross border expeditions to DL summits declaring that they were making the last activation before the summit was deleted at the end of the month. This resulted in many pile-up’s by chasers anxious to have these summits in their logs for the last time.
I am amazed at the number of chasers who do not listen to the activator and fail to understand that if they are calling at the same time as the activator then they are wasting their time. Activators are creatures of habit and tend to use the same procedure when they operate. One method used by many activators to end a contact is "73 TU DE DL9XXX QRZ? when many chasers send their call after the “TU” which is a waste of time because they are sending at the same time as the activator and so cannot be heard and are causing QRM to the other chasers. They also miss any operational comments by the activator such as QRX5 or UP1.
73
Roy G4SSH
SOTA ACTIVITY REPORT FOR FEBRUARY 2016 by Kevin G0NUP
SOTA activators submitting entries to the data base for 10m, 6m and 1240 MHz during February 2016. These files produced on 27th February - by Kevin G0NUP.
Mode: SOTA CW on 24MHz: activity for February
DK4RW/P, DL6FBK/P, F6HBI/P, HB9BCB/P, HB9DQM/P, JP3DGT/3, M1BUU/P, OK1MLP/P
Mode: CW on 28MHz: activity for February
AI4SV, DJ5AV/P, DK4RW/P, DL/HB9BIN/P, DL/HB9BRJ/P, DL4KCA/P, DL6FBK/P, EA2IF/P, F5LKW/P, F5UKL/P, F6HBI/P, G4TJC/P, GW4AZS/P, GW4TJC/P, HB9AGO/P, HB9BIN/P, HB9BQU/P, HB9CBR/P, HB9CGA/P, HB9DQM/P, HB9FVF/P, JP1QEC/1, K6EL, M1BUU/P, M1EYP/P, MW1EYP/P, OE/HB9FVF/P, OE5EIN/P, OK1MLP/P, OK2PDT/P, SO9TA/P, SP/OK2PDT/P, VE2DDZ, VK1DA/2, VK1DA/P, VK2IO/P, W7USA
Mode: CW on 50MHz: activity for February
DL/HB9BIN/P, F6HBI/P, JF1NDT/1, JH0CJH/1, JS1UEH/1, WW7D
Mode: CW on 1240MHz: activity for February
Mode: FM on 28MHz: activity for February
2E0YYY/P, DL3GBO, JR0GFM/0, KK6QMS, VK1DA/2
Mode: FM on 50MHz: activity for February
2W0EYT/P, GW4TJC/P, JN3PDF/3, VK1DA/2, VK3CAT/P
Mode: FM on 1240MHz: activity for February
JP1QEC/1, JR0GFM/0, JS1UEH/1, OE9TKH/P, OK1DEU/P, VK3PF/P
Mode: SSB on 28MHz: activity for February
2E0YYY/P, 9A/S57MS/P, AC1Z, AE4BL, AF7VP, CT2IUV/P, DD5LP/P, DG7ACF/P, DJ5AV/P, DL/HB9BIN/P, DL/OE5IRO/P, DL/OE5RTP/P, DL/OE9HRV/P, DL3GBO, DL8DBW/P, DO1DJJ/P, DO1JC/P, DO5TMM/P, EA2BD/P, EA6AIF, EC2AG/P, F4ESK/P, G1INK/P, G4TJC/P, GM1INK/P, GW4AZS/P, GW4TJC/P, HB9BIN/P, HB9BQU/P, HB9DQM/P, HB9FVF/P, IW2OBX/QRP, JR2YFM/1, JS1UEH/1, K6EL, K6YOA/P, KB6CIO, KI4SVM, KK4OSG, KK6YGB, M/YO9IRF/P, M1BUU/P, M1EYP/P, MW1EYP/P, N6MKW, OE/HB9FVF/P, OE9TKH/P, OK/OE5IRO/P, OK/OE5RTP/P, OK/SQ9KEK/P, OK2PDT/P, S56LXN/P, SV2CNE/P, SV2OXS/P, VK1AD/2, VK1AD/P, VK1DA/2, VK1DA/P, VK1DI/P, VK1EM/P, VK1FJAW/2, VK1MA, VK1MA/2, VK1VIC, VK2IO/P, VK2MWP, VK3BQ, VK3CAT/P, VK3PF, VK3YY, VK3ZPF, VK5NIG, W6PNG, W7USA
Mode: SSB on 50MHz: activity for February
I1WKN, IW2NHE/P, JF1NDT/1, JH0CJH/1, JH1EWV, JI1TLL/1, JM3URG/3, JR1NNL/1, JS1UEH/1, OK2PDT/P, S50DP/P, S56LXN/P, S57AX/P, S57MS/P, S57TQ/P, VK1AD/2, VK1AD/P, VK1DA/2, VK1DA/P, VK1EM/P, VK1MA, VK1MA/2, VK2IO/P, VK2MWP, VK3ANL, VK3BQ, VK3CAT/P, VK3YY, WW7D
Mode: SSB on 1240MHz: activity for February
WW7D
–
Regards
Kevin J Prince G0NUP
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SOTA News is normally published on the last day of each month, but there will be occasions when the Editor is not available at this time, in which case it will be published as soon as possible afterwards. It can only be as interesting as the items submitted, so if you think your particular field of interest is not being covered then please submit an article by the 25th of the month. Have you a favourite SOTA? favourite mode? favourite rig, antenna, or favourite band? How did you find your first day / month / year as an activator or chaser? Your comments and experiences will be read by enthusiasts all across Europe, the USA, Australia and beyond, in a total of 114 different SOTA associations worldwide. Your input will be most welcome.
I receive many e-mails during the month containing details of activations, milestones reached and general SOTA news. Unless advised otherwise I will use this information in the next edition of SOTA News. It is important therefore that you advise me if any information is not intended for publication.
Roy G4SSH
SOTA News Editor
g4ssh@tiscali.co.uk
U.S. and Canadian reports to:-
Fred K6DGW/7 [aka “Skip” on the radio]
Canada/US SOTA Reporter Dude
Sparks NV
k6dgw@foothill.net
Australian input to:-
Allen VK3HRA
VK Reporter
VK3ARH@wia.org.au (Note the change)
New Zealand input to:-
Warren ZL2AJ
warren@zl2aj.com
Japanese reports to
Toru JH0CJH
jh0cjh@jarl.com
South African input to:-
Dennis ZS4BS
zs4bs@netactive.co.za