We were fortunate enough to be able to hold Trans-Atlantic S2S events in November 2020 and November 2021 and I am thinking that this year we should return to holding two events as we did pre-pandemic.
For the Spring event we usually use the same date as that for the QRPTTF event and I have just checked and can advise that this will be 23rd April, 2022.
The April event tends to be more difficult and produce fewer S2S contacts than those held in November, but now that band conditions are generally improving, I think it is worth holding two events this year. If there is no interest, then that is not a problem. We will just continue with the Autumn event held on the first Saturday in November.
I was unable to play in last November’s event and I am glad that we are having a spring event this year. This is always a fun event and now that we are climbing out of the bottom of the solar cycle it can only get better!
Well, the post from Fraser MM0EFI about his latest outing in the snow has prompted me to bump this post up the reflector. It is just over 2 weeks to go to this event. It very much looks like I will be up in Scotland, so i had better start looking for a reasonably accessible summit with a good take off in the appropriate direction. Recent band conditions have shown the higher bands are coming back into play, so maybe it is time to add 15m links to my vertical. Hopefully some good contacts will be made over the pond.
Hi Gerald,
I think this is going to be a balancing act between three factors:
The weather
Time differences when people are out on the summits
and
The TOD (time of day) that the bands will be open (I think for EU-NA, it’ll be afternoon UTC time).
At the moment we don’t have any planned times posted for the NA stations and the EU one are too early I think:
at least there are only a limited number of contests it seems:
I think 17m might be a good choice though, to avoid the Swiss contest traffic.
73 Ed.
The TA S2S Event collides with a local SOTA meeting which has been planned long ago. Some members have scheduled a brief activation in the morning of April 23rd - way too early for TA S2S, unfortunately
Still I hope the event will be a great success. Good luck to everyone!
Many thanks for the advice Roman. Well something was bound to get in the way. That’s a fact of life… there is not enough time to fit everything in!
The event timing is set by the date for the QRPTTF event in the States to give some encouragement to activators that side of the pond. If I get a load of Stateside / Canadian activators suggesting another date, then an alternative can be considered for next year, but it is too late to change now. We did debate this in the past and arrived at the current arrangement which we knew wouldn’t suit everyone, but was the best compromise at the time.
But maybe we can install equipment and antennas at the site and see if we can reach any stations from North America as DL20SOTA/P… even if we are not on a summit…
With the current solar condition improving I’d like to participate.
Most probably I will carry antennas for 15-17-20 meters for a better chance of working over the pond.
Maybe Jorge EA2LU will join me in the summit as well.
We will add the alert soon.
You can count on my participation but I haven’t decided on wich summit.
I will post an alert next week.
A doublet for 15-17-20m would be this year’s choice.
