Today I did a Sota without any spotting. For sure it was by accident. In the morning I put an alert, as I always do when I work cw. It is for the RBN. I went to FL/VO- 070. There was no mobil phone coverage. I started my activation on 20m, thinking that RBN would spot me. No contact at all. 30 - one, 40 - two all in long 35 minutes. I changed back to 20 … again 14 minutes calling “cq cq sota” when I heard a S2S. It was Armin DL6GCA from a Sota in HB/LU. When he asked me for my REF I asked myself why. Was there no announcement on sotawatch? When I was back under cellular coverage, I saw there was not.
Why? The day before I was activating in LX and I did not change to F on sotl.as when I did the alert. So RBN to Sota was looking for LX/ EA4HIH and was calling F/EA4HIH.
44 minutes for 4 QSOs whitout spotting. Not bad at all for very old school Sota.
Conditions were once again quite peculiar and mixed today…
At times, I heard very little on 40m and 30m. But there was also heavy QSB on 20m and the higher bands… at times there were crazy short-skip conditions, and then DX would suddenly break through…
On 15m, the range shifted from nothing to HB9 to K4QS … then to OK1ZE … and then to JA1VVM within the span of five minutes.
I and another regular (UK) 30m activator discussed this on another thread recently. This morning I got 5 QSOs on 30m (in 7 mins) and 3 QSOs on 40m (in 3 minutes – I had to go QRT early as the flies on summit wouldn’t leave me alone).
This QSO rate is okay but it’s nothing like the high chaser activity I used to get. To be certain, I checked my 30m logs back to 2017: For 9 years until 2026 I regularly got 10-15 QSOs on 30m often as pile-ups, but 30m activity seemed to have dropped for me about six months ago.
It’s not due to poor propagation: SFI and K indices today were ‘good’; I’m still getting pan-European QSOs including S2Ss; still getting and giving good reports with the same set-up (KX2 10W into inv-L EFHW with counterpoise).
I conclude it’s a drop in activity: maybe a drift from CW to FT8, maybe the 2026 SOTA Challenge has taken some HF activators/chasers to 2m SSB, who knows?
I’ve worked several stations yesterday and today who seemed very relieved to receive my call… and not all were SOTA activators. Some were activating POTA and WWFF areas running more power and needing more contacts to qualify their activations.
Conditions on 20m have been particularly strange allowing inter-G contacts alongside the more usual distances. I worked Andy GM4LLD on SSB yesterday and Ronan MM0IVR on CW today, both south of the Scottish Central Belt. 40m has not been that reliable of late. I wonder whether it is these factors that are putting people off… then again, the weather has been very pleasant and some may have taken the opportunity to get out after weeks trying to keep out the hot sun.
I have a sense that the 2m Challenge has something to do with the reduced contact rate on HF. Looking at the spots around mid-day today I noticed very few opportunities to try for an HF s2s contact - zero s2s QSOs. Four QSOs on 40m and 3 on 20m was my ration today. (One of my more successful recent activations.) I also wonder about ground conditions - normally the S Wales hills tend to have very damp areas around the actual top.
73, Rod
In fact the only time 20m has been good for inter-G SOTA was when I was up in Shetland on Yell and conditions on 40/30/60 were not good. This was 2017 and I tried 20 and could work G stations but I was a hell of lot further North than normal.
EDIT: I missed off the 20m SSB list M0UFX and 20m CW MW0IDX & M1GEO
