Yes, I worked an activator over the weekend who was weak with me (32). It was a good excersise for me in how to tweak the rig for best reception (with modern rigs theres a lot of twiddling that can be done). The old fashioned way of turning down the RF gain still seemed to have the biggest effect with filters and noise reduction just adding the needed extra readability.
Theres also the opposite to consider - “will the activator be able to hear me?”. This is especially relevent when you consider they probably have more ambient background noise (audio) than me. The only tool I have in that respect is extra power.
Absolutely. Whilst local signals dont show much difference FM to SSB there is a point where no matter what FM just doesnt work. The G/WB region on FM is marginal to me and depends mainly on what equipment the activator is using. On SSB, I don’t think I’ve missed out on many.
Yesterday, I did try to listen for yourself, but while I could hear people working you and I could tell there was something there with the occiasional word being audible. There was a spot where I made out 2 words quite clearly, and I suspect some kind of brief aircraft reflection or similar.
A little bit of compression if available, and / or consciously speak at a constant level - as if you were talking to someone next to you in a noisy pub.
SSB over a marginal path has limited dynamic range, which may not be intuitive to an FM enthusiast.
I’m finding strong signals are much better with FM. Obviously SSB is narrower bandwidth but some are coming through weaker than FM and others seem to be overloading the FT817 front end.
I had this on Billinge Hill, but I just assumed that it was because the chaser was in the same grid square. I got 2km for the qso but I think it was closer to 700m to 800m.
There are 3 licensed amateurs that live in that square, with one being a regular sota chaser. So you could almost qualify the summit and have a 6km score
Those are fair points - it was just an anecdotal observation. I’m certainly using exactly the same kit for FM and SSB but I don’t know if the chasers are. I will enquire next time.
Went out up The Cloud G/SP-015 for a regular SOTA activation. No contests, no multi-summit activity event, no blast of self-promotion. Just an alert and a few periodic self-spots. Pretty normal SOTA activating practice.
36 QSOs:
2m CW: 1
2m FM: 6
2m SSB: 29
The 2m CW contact was with Heiko, DL8QS in JO43kh. Rather pleased with that one - albeit also slightly disappointed not to work any other DX given that it was possible!
Well done Tom on your DL Qso… After I worked you yesterday on 144ssb I did spot you on the DXCluster Dxsummit. I also spotted Kris MW9KRS/P on his freq.
There was a fair bit of activity on FT8 and spotted a number of qsos going on between the UK and DL and OZ. I wonder if people are going straight to FT8 and skipping SSB/CW , which is a shame.
I don’t know how easy or hard your qso was with DL8QS and how many repeats were needed, but with FT8 marginal contacts are much easier to complete (from the operators standpoint) which probably explains why its the goto mode.
The Hebburn tropo forecast indicated that the potential area of ducting would be south of me and moving further away, so I wasn’t expecting a repeat of yesterday - but that’s pretty much exactly what I got - some nice S2S, plenty of QSOs and one (but again, just one) really good DX contact.
