I would like to publicly thank Mickey 2E0YYY for his support in offering to supply radio and antenna equipment, which enabled me to activate my first ‘G’ summit Shining Tor G/SP-004. Today’s activation is the culmination of many emails over a five month period.
Activating a summit on 2m FM in VK1 on a good day, might net the activator 6 chasers and less for 2m SSB. At Shining Tor, I netted 28 chasers on 2m FM alone, followed by 30 chasers on HF bands. The 2m pileup started at 15:52 UTC and continued for the best part of 1 hour.
Thanks Mickey for a fun packed 2 hours on Shining Tor. The cold wind eventually got to me. Thanks for the opportunity to undertake a dual activation, with your help I now have my first completed G SOTA peak. For the readers who aren’t aware, since late 2013, Mickey and I have been working S2S on 20m between summits in the UK and Australia. No shortage of G peaks in my SOTA chaser log.
Enough of my activation details. I’m reliably informed today’s activation of Shining Tor is Mickey’s 100th activation of G/SP-004. Congratulations Mickey, a proud day for you and great to watch as you worked through the 4 qualifying chasers. Well done!
My congratulations to Mickey - 100 activations of the same summit is truly impressive.
Also congratulations to you too Andrew on getting a new association and a complete under your belt at the same time! I am sure that you will get at least another couple when you head over the other side of the channel.
Apologies for not trying to work you, but my bed was calling me many hours before you activated and the chances were fairly slim that we would have had propagations (the solar numbers were rubbish - similar to where they are now). Have fun and hope to catch you on a summit before you head back here.
Yes indeed Matt. Not sure what antenna Andrew and Mickey were using. I could not hear Andrew on 20M but a huge pile up including Arabia, South and North America. A Italian posted this on the DX-Cluster:
IU7CUD VK1AD/M 14310 73 1741z 22 May
Wrong call but there seemed to be a surge of interest
Cheers
Mike
What antenna were they using? Probably the Antron 99 if I know Mickey! Couln’t hear a peep out of him this afternoon either though.
Yes, the lure of a VK1 that people can actually hear cannot be understated. Once spotted I frequently end up with decent sized pileups as a result. Kind of irritating when I am trying to work SOTA chasers but means the log gets filled quickly. Yesterday’s activation was a little slow with only 70 odd contacts in 2 hours (bit over half being VK’s), but conditions were pretty rubbish.
