I’ve been making up a linked dipole for 17m through to 6m recently, I managed to finish it yesterday.
I have been chasing the Spanish ITU 150 stations and they seemed to be concentrating on 17m and up. I did finally work my 8th station on 30m yesterday afternoon a few hours before the event finished, I just managed my certificate! Yesterday at my QTH, nothing above 15m was working well. 17m seemed a bit iffy too.
I think 30m is my favourite band at the moment.
I’ve heard nothing on ten or six since I built the antenna
I will keep trying 6 & 10, I hope to give them a shot on my next activation now that my antenna is finished.
Gerald and Jonathan - Sorry I missed you both. We ended up completely out of sync.
Tom has allowed me a week at the top of the Challenge activator table for the G association. But no doubt when he uploads the logs from his Brecon-Beacons tour that will be history! So I concentrated on 10m for three activations in the Yorkshire Dales. Pen-y-ghent and Fountains Fell went well enough, but Birks Fell was a bit of a disappointment - my own fault for not posting an alert ahead of loss of phone signal.
And that’s not all that went wrong!
Thanks to all the chasers and to Dene for the S2S.
Blog write up: [Banana Shaped][1]
Edit: I knew it wouldn’t last long - blown away by Tom’s Brecon Beacons bash!
[1]: G4TJC: Banana-Shaped
True, but an alert could prompt someone to look and find that they are in luck. I had a window to the central Med but now instead there are a number of stonkingly strong Spanish stations. As always things change rapidly so it is best to keep checking.
Nothing on 6m for me so far today. Its grim up north…
10m is the money band in the challenge at present, plenty of activity coming out of EA2, HB9, OE, G so far today. Short skip on 20m so I expect 6m will open up soon.
Looks like whatever Sp. E there was about, disappeared while I was driving through Wigan between the two activations! Nice and easy to flick instantly between the two challenge bands using the 10/6 vertical with groundplane made for me by Richard G3CWI.
Hi Brian,
made my first ever 6m SOTA contact today with Herbert OE9HRV, using my 2 element mini-tri-bander-beam! I was surprised it worked at all. Time to get the 6m Moxon out of it’s transport box and get it up on the mast. Might as well go on the home station as it wont be used portable (portable operation on 6m not allowed in Germany).
If you were running 5 watts then you were doing well working into North Yorkshire - Billinge Hill is 163 Km and Winter Hill 145 Km away from my QTH in IO94of.
Phil, don’t under rate the 817 on six - I got 59 from IS0BSR using the 817 and an HB9CV 2 el antenna. This is so normal I never even mention that I’m QRP. If the Es is right flea power is enough, if it is wrong a big linear doesn’t help!
Nothing for me on 6m today, nil pois on that band. 6m can be much harder up north apart from working into Scandinavia, and there aren’t many SOTA stations there compared to DL/HB9/OE/OK etc where a significant number of activators are taking the challenge seriously and spending a long time on summits before moving off. The QSOs I had today were with all stations on 10m - the band was in fine fettle.
I have one myself, and I wouldn’t underrate the FT-817 on 6m or 10m Brian when conditions were as were this morning, and Tom was right - the sporadic e subsided away while he was driving across Wigan.
Did you pick up any pies on your way through Tom? For all you southerners who do not know Wigan is the pie capital of the world…off topic. A good book, receommended reading - Pies and Prejudice - in Search of the North by Stuart Maconie
Yes, 0857 UTC, he was S9 for half an hour (I kept tuning across him) then QSB set in, and then the propagation shifted to EA/CT. Later as I started to wonder whether to look for transatlantic stations the opening started to weaken. What I SHOULD have done was monitor for Es on two…!
