As previously advised earlier in the year, the dates for the Autumn Trans-Atlantic S2S Event are Saturday 1st November 2025 and Sunday 2nd November 2025. The core operating times are 12:00z - 17:00z, with activity before and / or after as activators wish. A bit of power helps, so dust off those 30 watt linears.
It will be interesting to see how conditions are on the higher bands now that the solar peak appears to have been passed. This year the Spring event in April was somewhat disappointing in terms of Trans-Atlantic contacts, but in past years the Autumn event has proved to be better.
All being well, I am hoping to head north to Scotland once again and operate as GMOIG/P, but I havenāt yet decided on the actual summits. Summits with a good access route will be required as the descents will be in the dark.
73, Gerald G4OIG / G8CXK
EDIT: Trip to Scotland postponed due to family reasons. All being well, I will be QRV as G8CXK/P from Cornwall on G/DC-002, but the weather isnāt looking good.
Iāve worked North America (and South America a bit) - mainly during the SOTA 2024 10m event - using only 10W CW (from my KX2) on 10m, 12m and 15m. I donāt mind lugging my heavier FT857, LDG Z11 Pro 2 ATU and bigger battery up a (modest) SOTA summit to get 30-50W of CW if there were a benefit.
I rarely āhunt and pounceā e.g. for S2Sās but alert, (self) spot and wait for chasers to come to me, so Iām not competing with QRO stations.
I had always thought - or more likely, been told - that, if 10m was open to N/A then 10W of CW should be enough. And if 10m isnāt open, it wonāt matter how much RF power I have.
Am I right? Would 30W make much / any difference if 10m is open?
There is a downside to that now because there are enough stations that SOTAwatch can be very busy with spots. Many people only look at the 1st page of spots and do not scroll about. On my PC here the 1st page shows 25 spots. I have seen so much activity such that 25 spots covers 4 minutes of time and any spots over 4 minutes old disappear off the 1st page. So you spot and you are busy for a few minutes. Then it goes quiet. Not because nobody wants to work you but that you are no longer visible on the 1st page.
The best fix is for chasers to scroll about the pages looking for likely stations to chase. Or use the filtering to only show a single band they are chasing at a time. Spotting yourself again pushes you onto the 1st page but pushes others down. And when people spot themselves every few minutes everyone else gets pushed off the 1st page. It just causes everyone else to spot themselves more often and a vicious circle of repeated spotting begins.
Iāll bet the more successful chasers do not just have good stations but have more effective use of the spotting tools.
Or use the filter to exclude other modes. If Iām doing CW, Iāll select āCW onlyā so I can see who else I could work or which bands are open and to where.
Anyway, 10W or 30W? No hassle or a bit of a hassle?
Probably not, but will 10m be open? Who knows? My comment was just to encourage activators to consider running a bit more power so those signals that are in the noise might be a little more copyable and so facilitate a QSO. Having said that, I have made some excellent contacts running the KX3 barefoot. It is all about maximising S2S potential.
Self-spotting and calling CQ is fine, but it is what I do on my usual activations. I rarely look at the spots and rely on chasers to find me. In the S2S events, I do look at the spots and call those that are spotted. A reversal of procedure. What this does to my log is to make it more S2S focused. During slack periods, I call CQ, usually on CW letting the RBN spot me, which then gives the chasers the opportunity to call me.
It is all down to what we want from these events. I set up the first one in 2017 when I realised that I had never made a Trans-Atlantic S2S in over a decade of SOTA. The first event changed that and ever since I have looked for Trans-Atlantic S2S contacts as a priority.
Thatās a good point. The vast majority of my transatlantic 10m contacts were with home stations (probably QRO with good antennas). When I listened on the S2S spotted frequencies, I could hear very weak CW but they were too weak to work. Iāll take the FT857 and go QRO for a rare change.
The downside is more battery capacity required which means a heavier pack. I settled on the KX3 + linear format and for 4 to 5 hours of the event take 2 LiPOs to run the KX3 and 2 LiFePO4s to run the linear. Selecting summits with good track access is essential for the November event with the descent in the dark. No problem in April of course.
How about just showing the last spot of an activator? BTW, this woould also with fat-fingered guys like me who press the āsend spotā button several times and thus appear with the same frequency several times.
PS: slightly off-topic: I tried the QRT feature, the spot disappeared and an old spot on previous freq appeared as a ānewā one. What did I do wrong?
Ohā¦ and reading a report about one of the GM/ES summits, donāt forget to pick a summit with 4G access. I recall struggling on one summit Iād chosen for an S2S event.
Who knows? Anything can happen on a summit. I even had rain wipe a self spot before I could send it.
The FT857, LDG Z11 ATU & LiFePo4 10Ah battery weigh ~3.4kg compared to my usual KX2 & 4Ah Tracer battery which weigh ~1.3kg. A couple of extra kg is no big deal for a one-off event especially as Iāll activate an easy local G/LD summit. But the QRO kitās bigger volume means taking my biggest rucksack, which Iād have to anyway if November rains threaten and I need a tarp.
Must be the age. I tend to ignore more and more :-). But in earnest: it does not work for me :-(. Setting was gray, changed to blue, saved, spotted, spotted QRT, spot vanished. Setting chsnged to grsy again, spotted, qrt, nothing.
Test works neither: have to set a mode, but cannot, so canāt do a Test spot.
I donāt know what you are doing but QRT spots work fine for me (Linux Debian13 + FF 141.x)
I can spot and spot QRT and behaviour is what Iād expect.
If you want to spot a TEST you need to set callsign, assoc, summitref, freq and mode then click test. If you click test without a mode already set you cannot set the mode and you cannot post the spot. That seems logical to me, set all details up for the spot then say it is a test.
Going to see if I can rustle up enough bits that work to pump out 100W on my local drive up G/CE-001 Cleeve Hill. Inverted-V dipole on 20M and quarter wave vertical on 10M.
