50 grand would buy you a mid tier EV or a SOTAcopter. Minus running costs, repairs, pilot license and hangar storage for a chopper but I digress… 
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Ach, I’m sure once I part exchange my rusty old Skoda I’ll be well on my way.
Virtually ready to sign off for flight.
Cheap enough for spares.
It’s “virtually ready” and “cheap enough”, what could possibly go wrong?
Just need to speak to my pals at Ben Alder Estate and see if they’ll let me use their underground hangar - just about in the ideal spot in the heart of GM/CS, and well within range of plenty of ES/WS/SS hills too.
Image by Rob Burke on Geograph
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Just as well your RF was going nowhere near them! My gut feeling (it’s a big gut) would expect a 400m ASL to 550m ASL QSO even with Arran in the way to work reasonably reliably every day with about 25W erp SSB at each end (5W small Yagi). I not expect a 100-ish mile QSO on FM with “better than rubber duck” antennas to be that much less reliable. The path is over water about 40% of the time so typical marine ducting would help.
It’s reasonable to assume your RF was leaving at least 10deg above the horizon and so by the time you travel 43km to the main ridge on Arran, your RF would be about 7.5km above ground. It could have entered a duct by then. But I’d more suspect normal everyday troposcatter did the business for you.
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I think I’ll just save up and buy an antigravity lift belt when the scientific advances promised by the AI enthusiasts come to pass! (Or a negative gravity anvil for Andy!)
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My haircut’s certainly more Dr. Evil than Anthea Turner.
That’s good to know, thanks for the advice. I’ve clearly still got a lot to learn in terms of propagation, and it’s good to have a community of knowledgeable folk who’re able to steer a muppet like me in the right direction!
And we can pay for it all in NFTs, brilliant!
Based on the locator given on the POTA site for Ardgillan Castle and Demesne Regional Park @EI3LH and I were 262km apart which is good for a handheld (or two?). But I notice that it is not marked as P2P on the POTA site because you logged the wrong callsign for me. You missed off the /P so it sees it as a hunt and not a P2P. You should always log under the exact callsign used. G4TGJ and G4TGJ/P are different callsigns. (This is not a POTA specific issue).
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That is some going for HT to HT! Thanks for the heads up, POTA support are normally pretty good at fixing that stuff. Normally I’d have it 99.9% in PoLo so my bad!
I’ll get it corrected and re-upload. 
I’ve had trouble with this multi-themed topic [Dr Evil, etc] discerning which antennas were used in the said QSO: It seems like both were RH770 or one a 2m Slim G, in any case omnidirectional verticals. I would expect the contribution from tropospheric scattering to be minimal with so little RF energy in the shared volume from their 5W HTs. You need Yagis to exploit that.
IMO it’s much more likely to be a one or more of marine ducting (as Andy said), tropospheric ducting (especially given the high-pressure weather recently) and reflections from hills.
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Likewise - thanks for a great S2S. I don’t often get EI summits and not many summits at that distance. The conditions were definitely favourable.
I did a couple more G/LD summits today but no long distance magic. 70cm and 4m seemed to work better today. 
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Glad to be of service! 
Thank the mega FT-65 RH-770 magic combo though, they did the hard work! 
My fave. Just wish it was used more. 
I need to get in to 4 meters. A fellow EI jamon was on to me about it but I’ve no rig that can do it (far as I know?). I can do 6 through with the Diamond RHM-12 and ATAS. Never tried it however.
I’d love to try 23cm this year. Not sure what the most cost-effective way to ‘dip a toe in’ to 23cm is though…
Always interesting to work someone on two bands for comparison, in our case 2m FM and 70cm FM, with you ~50km away NW on Grisedale Pike G/LD-015 this morning. Definitely not line of sight (with my V2000 collinear at about 27m ASL) but the path narrowly missing the big stuff in the central Lake District.
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Apologies for the wandering threads! In my case, the Hill of Stake (GM/SS-155) to Donald’s Hill (GI/SM-013) QSO was made on a 5W Yaesu FT-270 into a 2m Slim G on a fibreglass pole, so yeah, omni verticals. Just for confusion, I did also have the FT-65 and RH-770 as well, but only used those for 70cm.
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No apology necessary. It’s in the best tradition of this reflector!
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I’m a frequent thread wanderer myself. The wanderings are often the best bits once the main theme has been exhausted.
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Do bike saddles still come with suspension springs on them? When did they stop? 
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Yes!
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Hey Alanis Morrisette - this is what Irony is.
I do agree, and as a frequent “subject ignorer” or a “while I’m mentioning it” , they can result in fascinating discussions.
Long may they continue.
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6m E’s today. Might try my luck during lunch break.
Anyone having any success?
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