Exactly Gerald. Effectively, it appears that we’re going to become (even more) “self-policing”. Which is probably exactly what Ofcom intends.
Whenever I’m transferring my SOTA activator QSOs to my main all-time logbook, some of the Russian contacts are a pain because they require me to consult QRZ.com to determine the DXCC. R9 and R2 no longer (and in fact rarely) indicate Asiatic Russia or Kaliningrad! But sometimes they do! Similarly, the numbers in USA callsigns no longer have the link to call areas they once did. Will this misery extend to G and M calls, wondering which UK DXCC entity to assign? Time will tell.
I expect the majority will carry on as before. I am though aware of one English station who will now abandon the RSL when operating in other UK+CD entities, and another that has expressed an intention to introduce the E RSL for England to all activity going forward. Hopefully the prospect of being incorrectly logged by many chasers, and the inevitability of a new deluge of eQSL requests and follow-up emails, will dissuade!!
I must admit that I have little interest in the topic and no intention of changing. I’m much more interested in playing with my new toy, the 10m band at sunspot maximum!
[NOAA] The error bars on this prediction mean the panel expects the cycle maximum could be between 105-125 with the peak occurring between November 2024 and March 2026
I’m not sure I can cope with such a period of intense fun!
Or just imagine how upset people who have just got licenced will be when they find out what propagation is normally like when Old Sol goes back to her slumbers
With my homemade 80/60m inverted-V linked dipole (with 2m end cords) on a 6m pole the peg to peg distance is about 42m. Clearly not for every summit.
I was impressed how low the 80m background noise is on summits (like it must have been in 1950s/60s shacks before everyone got loads of electrical appliances).
Hmm! At that time many cars did not have effective suppressuon of ignition noise - no electronic ignition at that time - and as if that wasn’t bad enough television timebase harmonics went up well into UHF! It was far from paradise! I lived near a main road and some passing cars could cause interference when a couple of hundred metres away - though at that time we would have said a couple of hundred yards. The neighbours on one side had a vacuum cleaner that wiped out the 70cm band and she was a compulsive housework freak.
I still hear the buses coming when it’s dark enough to have the interior lights on in the bus. Worse on 2m than 70cm. Not everything has been fixed. At least it is transient… and they come in threes.
As for a solar low challenge, why not 2m? The band has been largely neglected in recent years. Lightweight antennas would suit more or less any summit area.
The data tells the opposite story Gerald, and consistently does so however you choose to interrogate it - number of activators, number of activations, number of QSOs, looking at it for just UK associations (to strip out the “global growth of SOTA” factor) etc.
There are, I’m sure, valid justifications for a 2m challenge when we approach the solar minimum. Your alleged ‘neglect’ of the band is demonstrably untrue, and therefore not one of them.
Now do the sums WITHOUT 2m contests. Not everyone wants to be or even has the capability of being on a summit at 19:00 hrs… and what’s this UK only thing? A challenge would be worldwide so assess the state of play for 2m on a worldwide basis. .
I think SOTA has done a lot - as have contests and special events - to maintain activity on 2m FM [and SSB/CW to a lesser extend] at least here in the UK.
But as Oldies like me keep pointing out to the young dudes e-v-e-r-y t-i-m-e this topic comes up, the general level of ad-hoc activity on VHF/UHF bands outside of the above events is much much lower than in the Good 'ld Days (before the Morse test abolition) when ‘code-less’ licensees like me were confined to 144MHz above [@G8ADD will now tell you it was even worse than that in the Dark Ages].
YES! And add to that idea the point that both Germany and Luxembourg are about to implement entry-level licences that only allow access to 70cm, 2m & 10m and (speaking just for Central Europe) we could be about to see the current low level of activity of 2m simplex improve from mid this year.
OK, most new hams will no doubt start on FM, but there will be those who venture to SSB, CW and digital. Some independent SOTA 2m activity days (similar to the Bavarian “berg tagen”) could be worth running in Autumn.
I said that it didn’t matter whether you looked at UK only or not, 2m, and indeed 2m SSB was not in decline, quite the reverse in fact. Why should contests be stripped out? They are valid SOTA activations and valid SOTA contacts. But if you want, go for it. It reduces the number of activators contributing regularly to 2m SSB SOTA by one - and as such does not come close to changing the fact that your inference is not supported by evidence.
