Trans-Atlantic S2S QSO Party - 3 November 2018- Activation Reports

Oh, yes! We almost forgot to praise our lucky anvil aka the mighty hammer of luck. Good job buddy :smile:
Not something to carry on every summit but here it worked well.


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Weather in southern Spain was incredibly warm on Saturday. I spent the morning with the family on Estepona promenade and I was wearing a t-shirt (and I’m a cold person).
So, it wasn’t a surprise to find nice and warm (15 C) weather at 1400m altitude at Pico de Los Reales (EA7/MA-008) in the afternoon.
Plenty of people on the summit, I had to move about 50m from the top to find a decent spot where to install a 14MHz vertical mounted EFHW.
QRP (5W) and SSB didn’t make things easy, although I managed to log 20 operators all EU, 8 of them S2S.
Around 14:50 UTC I realized that the LiPO battery was dead and I had no choice other than taking few pictures and hike back to the car park.

Overall I felt like the trans-atlantic event went well, many EU operators have managed to cross the pond and add some NA stations to their logs. For me it was mainly a test for the newly built antenna and a way to get back to SOTA after some years of inactivity.

Thanks to all the activators for the S2S QSOs and all the chasers who called me. I hope to meet you soon again from another summit!

73s Gab EA7JUG - IZ1KSW

Some pictures of the day:

!

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Ivica 9A6CW just posted a video receiving my signal Saturday morning at 1337Z.

It’s partly a testament to his excellent delta loop antenna, but propagation was certainly pretty decent as well. I was running 12W into an EFHW up about 30ft/9M :astonished::astonished:

73 Barry N1EU

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I copied you several times while you were working S2S with other activators and your portable station was putting a good easy to copy signal here.
Congrats!
Unfortunately I never found you CQing nor found any spot for you, so I couldn’t chase you. Shame…

Next time, hopefully.
73,

Guru

Hi everyone,

i enjoyed the S2S-event from DM/HE-570, “Große Haube”, located in the core-zone of the Nature Park “Hessische Rhön”, DLFF-0065.

With 5 W (KX2) and a balanced-feeding-line into a “Triple-leg” (all elements 7m), it was possible to work 11 DX-Stations from the States and Canada and 1 S2S-QSO with Barry, N1EU!
Many QSO´s from Europe, inclusice S2S, are also in the log.

Many thanks for the organization and to all Hams´s for the nice QSO´s! Such a S2S-event is always a great challenge for alle participants, I´m looking forward to the next!

Don´t wonder about the VHF-antenna in the picture: additionally, i took part for a short time in the VHF-Marconi-Memorial-Contest (IARU-Region 1) until sunset, looking for some new squares and DX, because I´m also a (qrp) VHF/UHF-enthusiast.
In the hope to step aside the wild boar, i hiked down with the last shafts of sunlight.
Ham-Radio from the mountains ist always a great experience!

73, Gerhard

Antennenaufbau

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Tnx fer qso Yesterday nice to Greece at 17m band didnt expect to hear you 73’
op Mike…:slight_smile:

A most excellent event, I had enormous fun! Many thanks to Gerald, Barry and Ed for making it happen.

Only made 15 contacts, but four of these were stateside with two S2Ss - Thanks KI4SVM and N2YTF! YO8SEP/P, MW0XOT/P and M0PLA/P brought the S2S total up to five.

I was running about 4.5W to an “upper and outer” for 20m which seemed to work quite well. Just for interest I tried the “outer” leg extended to the SE and the NW to see if it made any difference - hard to be sure due to the vagaries of QSB and propagation but I got the distinct impression of better readability when it was extended NW towards the States…

The QRM issue with Gerald on the same summit was totally unexpected - we have operated the same radios (857/817) many times in very close proximity without problems though on reflection I had always been on 7MHz or lower. This needs more investigation… Apologies to those that were calling and that I missed due to not being able to hear them. And to Gerald, who was also experiencing QRM from me :frowning:

73 de Paul G6GGP/G4MD

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Oh…
I failed to give information
about propagation and used frequencies.
QSO´s were done on 14 MHz, only two qso´s to Greece were made on 18 MHz, namely with you Mike (SV2HSZ) and one with SZ2T.
I called for a longer time cq in cw on 18 MHz and RBN said, that the band was open
(W1NT with 17 dB, W3UA with 19 dB, WZ7I-2 with 13 dB and VE2WV with 23 dB)…
but nobody answered.
Generally, there was a lot of QSB.
I was also surprised about the unexpected conditions!

73, Gerhard

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It looks like those Solar Coronal hole winds hit today as the Solar wind speed is now up to 463.5km/sec and K is at 3. So we were lucky!

73 Ed.

qsl SV2HSZ and SZ2T tha same Operator as Chaser and also as Activator for CW mode only.

Sorry to hear that Gerhard. The band was definitely open and there were stations to be worked on CW. Maybe location had a part to play. I was QRV on 18MHz between 1420z and 1515z and worked a total of 14 stations (10 American fixed, 3 EU fixed (one being on SSB - Kostas SV1ONW being copied at S4 running 1 watt to a GP ant) and 1 EU S2S with LZ1WF/P.

14MHz did produce the bulk of the contacts as I was QRV intermittently between 1340z and 1350z and between 1515z and 1640z. I worked 11 American fixed, 7 EU fixed, 5 American S2S (all CW except Tom N2YTF), 1 Canadian S2S (on CW) and 1 EU S2S (on SSB). Hmm, I only had 3 contacts on SSB.

73, Gerald

It’s good to see that the RF conditions seemed to be more than acceptable for the stage of the solar cycle. Shame the WX stopped a few from taking part. Not quite perfect but not bad for those looking forward to participating. Sadly for me I had a prior radio engagement or I’d have been braving something as well.

I’ve been looking at the solar conditions today and they’re a bit grim with K=4 A=16 for high latitudes as the predicted geomagnetic storms hit. Raw RBN spots are down to the point you can actually read the display as it scrolls rather than the usual blur and the DXcluster is ‘quiet’.

The question to answer is whether the good conditions were, as Ed had questioned, anything to do with the impending solar storm or if they were just typical of the arrival of November in the Northern Hemisphere.

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PLEASE REPLY TO THE DISCUSSION ON THE TIMING OF FUTURE EVENTS ON THE OTHER THREAD SET UP BY ANDY…
and keep the reports rolling in here. :grinning:

Those railings look familiar - was that HB/ZH-018 (Brandegg)?

Yup, Brandegg! I haven’t managed to upload my logs yet so I don’t show up in the activator list.

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Planing the next transatlantic S2S QSO party

(moving my activation report to this thread)

I managed to get my 40/20 EFHW about 30ft above the summit at W2/GC-026 and oriented toward EU. It was definitely tough going on ssb and only managed a few ssb S2S with my KX2 but had much better luck on cw. The level of participation over in EU seemed very good and was much appreciated. I fear that it was a bit lopsided, with many fewer NA activators, perhaps due to the bad weather in many areas of the US. 17M seemed to have better propagation than 20M, but not much activity.

I managed 32 S2S contacts on 28 unique summits, 22 in EU and 6 in NA. Thanks to these stations for S2S: 9A/E70AA, 9A6CW, DL4TO, DL6GCA, G4OOE, G8CXK, HB9BIN, HB9DBM, HB9DST, HB9EKO, HB9EWO, HB9GKP, HB9TVK, LB8CG, LZ1GJ, LZ1WF, M6GYU, MW0XOT, OE5AUL, OE5EEP, OE5YYN, OE6FEG, OE9HRV, S58R, K4LPQ, KR7RK, ND9Q (2 summits), VE2DDZ, WA7JTM

73 Barry N1EU

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I was very lucky yesterday on Sulzberg DL/MF-091.
Very nice propagation on 20m.
Worked 5 x USA, 1 x VE and 1 x 4X with 5W (FT-817) + home made Tri-Band vertical (QRPGuys) on 6m fiberglass pole
(6m GFK-Mast).


wx

73, Mario DJ2MX

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Hello,
I couldn’t join activating in this event, but tried to find some free time at home every now and then to sit on the radio and chase these SOTA stations in NA, all 20m CW:
thanks to N1EU, KR7RK, VE2DDZ and N1GVT for their summits.

I chased them all with my KX3 at 15 watts and a 2 element Hexbeam.

My transistor amplifier refused working that day and I was lucky to work them running low power… I felt almost like an activator, hi!
Thanks for your patience to get my callsign under such conditions.

73 de Ignacio

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As mentioned previously, not much in the way of success to report from a very wet and windy Lake District. I had a motorbike for transport, the summit of Gummer’s How G/LD-050 varied from light rain to downpour during the activation of 2 hours which started around 12:30pm. The antenna, a SOTABeams QuadBander 80/40/30/20 on the sturdy 10m compact travel mast only collapsed on itself once (blowing the bottom off like a safety valve) and for the most part I was huddled in a 2-man bothy bag developing summit legs (is that a thing?) to the point where my one band change from 40m to 20m had me stumbling around in agony for a couple of minutes!

Leaving my mobile phome was a definitely fail and I should just have sucked it up and gone back and got it. So not much chance of being chased by calling CQ blindly. I did have an emergency phone that can send to the SMS gateway but that didn’t seem to be working either. Intermittent power issues, probably caused by my dodgy wiring, meant that the rig was turning off mid QSO and I noticed the cable into the amp’s powerpole was hanging on for dear life. The amp got surprisingly warm when just tucked into a drybag!

Had a nice chat with a few folk on 40m then when I clipped to 20m did manage a S2S with @YO8SEP on YO/EC-044 who seemed to be doing brisk business then I got WW1USA in the log before packing up.

Would probably have been a whole lot better if I was able to stay long and with the android phone, but you know at least I got out there when everything was telling me to stay at home. No photo’s either obviously, not that they would have looked much.

Just hope the band Gods are smiling on us again next time round, given the unexpectedly favourable reports.

Mark. M0NOM

Time Call Band Mode Notes
12:43z G4RGV 7MHz SSB John
13:13z DF3AF 7MHz SSB Alex 400w 100km Dortmond
13:16z SP9YFF 7MHz SSB 198 WWFF
13:18z PA7DN 7MHz SSB Dirik FT-9000D Stolwijk
13:23z OE100DMA 7MHz SSB Thx for contact from SOTA G/LD-050
13:28z F5KKD/P 7MHz SSB Thx for contact from SOTA G/LD-050
13:32z DJ9YL/P 7MHz SSB Thx for contact from SOTA G/LD-050
13:38z EI6KI 7MHz SSB S. Ireland
13:48z 2E0DVV 7MHz SSB Jon Arnside
14:05z YO8SEP/P 14MHz SSB Thx for contact from SOTA G/LD-050
14:20z WW1USA 14MHz SSB National 1st WW Musuem
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