Southern england and isle of wight

I will be activating 9 Southern England Hills over the next 3 days including 2 on the Isle of Wight
Approximate times (about 700 miles driving!)
Sunday 27/11/16 G/SE-013 AT 08:30,G/ SE-015 AT 11:00 AND G/SE-007 AT 14:00
Monday 28/11/16 G/SE-011 at 0830, G/SE-010 AT 09:45, G/SE-014 AT 11:00 AND G/SE-006 AT 12:15
Tuesday 29/11/16 on the Isle of Wight G/SE-012 AT 12:00 AND G/SE-008 AT 16:00

I will start on 10.118 cw and listen on 145.500 FM, also 7.032 CW and 14,058 CW if bands are open
If possible I will spot from each summit.

73 Mike G0HIO

Suggest you post alerts on SOTAwatch.

Hi Tom
With the number of summits and using cw I was afraid it would all get messy if I did it that way.

Are you trying to avoid being spotted?

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Post the alert using wildcards

“G/SE-??? S+12 Various summits”

That way RBN, should it hear you will spot you and the chasers can ask for the reference.

How do I alert multiple summits within 2 hours of each other? do I just put the summit reference as xxx.
would appreciate your advice Tom as running out of time here.

Thanks Andy will try that later if I have time, s+12 in the comments I assume.

Yes. Use ? as a wildcard for either the number or alpha part of the ref, RBNhole will spot that so you don’t have to be specific and it gives you freedom of where and when to activate and allows for time problems (WX, ground, traffic).

The S+12 goes in the comments and extends the RBNhole window to the time in the alert + 12 hours. So if you alert for 1000Z and give S+12 then RBNhole will spot you if it sees you on RBN till 2200Z.

This relaxed kind of alerting is great for CW operation when you want to activate a few summits.

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Is this trick only for cw? (Probably yes as i dint see a trick to selfspot with ssb over the air right?)

Hi Tasos - The RBN network does not work with SSB signals. It’s mainly used for CW but I believe it might also work for RTTY.
The computer has to decode and understand the signal it receives and it’s format so it can’t do that for voice.

73 Ed DD5LP.

P.S. thnks for tthe contact today.

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yea I thought about it but I wasn’t hoping there is something new that can be done without a full scale PC.

is there any way to snd CW (by phone for example) with info about an activation on SSB with different Freq? Like transmit CW on the CW part of the band and inform about an SSB freq activation?!?!

@DD5LP :slight_smile: my pleasure

PS: for the record, and regarding my long post with @N1EU @HB9BCB and others, I didn’t finish the douplet antenna last night so I used the trusty 10meter long wire with my KX3. (the ground and probably the try was so wet that for the first time I found get the usual 1:1 SWR on 40m! it was 1:1.9!!)

Hi Tasos,
That has been discussed on an earlier thread and while technically possible, wouldn’t using APRS2SOTA give the same capability?
Ed.

You are probably right. Ive never used aprs to be honest.
Ill check it in depth but my quick consern is that its 2m based and I only have my hf radio with me. Fome hf activity seems to exist though!

I need to see if I have to invest in some 2m/70 digi thingy hmmm

APRS does HF as well.

http://www.aprs.net/vm/DOS/HF.HTM

But you’ll need to check where the next HF receiving station is.

Of course whether you use HF or VHF, you’ll need the capability to somehow enter the text you want spotting into SOTAWatch - so it’ll never be as straight forward as the automatic RBN network for CW but at least a solution for when you don’t have cell coverage.

73 Ed.

no luck today, just one chaser spotted me. How long does the spot last with +12
do I need 5 spots for 5 activations or does the one do the trick?

Theoretically, one alert should cover the specified number of hours. It could be argued that a middle-of-the-day alert with “S-6 S+6” or an end-of-day alert with “S-12” might give the alert better visibility to mere mortals.

This morning you have been spotted by RBNHOLE at least once:

Mon 09:21 G0HIO/P on G/SE-??? 14.0579 cw
*[RBNHole] at HA1VHF 19 WPM 17 dB SNR (Posted by RBNHOLE)

It’s possible your activations yesterday were missed because the very high (mostly CQWW CW contest) traffic overwhelmed parts of the RBN system.