W6PNG
27 April 2019 14:37
1
I’m going to give FT8 a whirl again from a mountain (hill?) tomorrow Sunday April 28th.
I haven’t used FT8 since a flurry activations almost 2 years ago.
Hopefully I’ll nab a few contacts assuming everyone isn’t in Blackpool.
Paul
M0SNA/W6PNG
www.nomadic.blog
1 Like
W6PNG
29 April 2019 14:48
2
Bit of a struggle yesterday and not sure if these wind turbines create any RF noise but 20m was S8 for me.
My 8 watts nabbed six 20m FT8 contacts and two 40m FT8 contacts.
This aside I was thrilled to see where PSKReporter claimed my puny signal was heard…seems way better in Scotland despite wind turbines versus So Cal.
Paul M0SNA/W6PNG
1 Like
W6PNG
29 April 2019 15:23
3
and here is a non narrative, photo centric trip report to give others an idea of what getting to Meikle Says Law is like.
SOTA summit: Meikle Says Law, Scottish Borders GM/SS-148 Activation Date: April 29, 2019 Unique: Yes, 160th and 198th overall Call sign used: MM0SNA/P Portable operation: Yes Radio: KX3 Antenna: B…
Aww, it’s a shame I missed you. I was on the neighbouring summit GM/SS-182 but I think I must’ve been packing up just as you were setting up. Next time!
Meikle Says Law? Yes very noisy… here is what I wrote 5 years back.
It’s a while since I written a report on an activation partly because I’ve not been out since 1-Jan-2014. The WX here has been horrible most weekends, heavy rain or mad gales. The WX this weekend wasn’t brilliant with snow for about 70miles North of here and heavy rain for everywhere else. A small patch of the borders looked to be OK and the only decent leg-stretching walk was to Meikle Says Law. (pronounced Mee kul).
I managed to get lost in the village of Haddington and made a 10mile detour b…
More importantly:
At the summit I used the fence and set up on 24MHz. Disaster! I’ve operated by many wind farms and they’re generally RF quiet. Not this. Bleeding great swathes of crackly noise at S9 on 17m,15m,12m,10,6m. Flipping the narrow CW filter gave me a an S1 noise floor but in general it was rubbish. I struggled to work 2 stations on 12m, I put this down to the noise swamping the RF stages and me not hearing people. But actually I wasn’t spotted by RBN and my self spot failed as typed nonsense in the spot. So 2 random contacts only on 12m. 20m was much quieter so I QSY’d and managed to build up a nice pile up in seconds. Thanks RBN
So it may have been worse had you gone higher. ISTR 30m was quite quiet, FT8 would work well there but I guess you don’t have an antenna for that band.