I’ve cancelled but hope to chase (even more of a challenge from my home shack than /P from a Hill!). Camping looked miserable with 40mph gusts and heavy rain all night.
I may well try an “unofficial” G/NP-VK next Saturday if the weather looks more promising. I’ll notify here if so in addition to an alert.
Good luck all
Bag is packed and I’ve been waking up at 5am or earlier anyway so no great shakes getting up early. Experiments with buck converters, lipos and the new linear didn’t go well so I’ve robbed the battery from the motorbike - will be my first SLAB activation tomorrow. New tent as well, so I’ll leave plenty of time, or will be bothy bagging it.
Glass of wine now in preparation for that 10kg rucksack tomorrow!
Mark. M0NOM
2 Likes
Here’s for some good conditions for everyone taking part. WX doesn’t look too brilliant in the UK at the time. I hope the assorted tents and bothy bags do the trick.
My bike (WR250R) is now sporting a LiFe battery as a just in case scenario, you can never have enough redundancy.
No charger needed all the balancing charging and low voltage cut out stuff is in the battery case. Plus it saves me well over 1.5Kg vs the origional SLAB battery in the bike. Its also an SSB battery so must be perfect for SOTA!
Compton
What’s “100” mean? Shouldn’t it be “73” 
Certainly right soggy out there at the moment, and has been since about 1pm, so I didn’t get a chance to raise my hexbeam to full height, as that’s a task that needs daylight and slightly drier weather…
Good luck to everyone taking part. Just awoke and will be heading off in 30 mins, Wx here? no idea - it’s too dark!
Hopefully contact some of you over the next couple of hours,
73 Ed.
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Safe travels. 20m is still closed here, at least for ssb
Lots of spots, but so far nothing DX heard here (though not having the hexbeam at height will be making it more difficult for me).
The usual VDSL whistles at 4kHz intervals, and some less persistant QRM.
One thing I wish folk (especially on CW) would remember is that working frequencies don’t have to be on 1kHz boundaries! You can squeeze more stations in if you use frequencies not on round 1kHz spots. Instead of (say) 14.064 dead, why not try 14.0635, or 14.06425, or … 
Nothing heard here in GM either yet, been on since 0600.
Thanks for organising the S2S event had fun chasing couldn’t get out on a summit have to work tonight. Worked HB9DQM LZ1GT EA2IF from EU 4 JA’s, 4 VK’s on cw and 1 on ssb.
30m was good 17m was good to JA. SSB signals from EU not workable here CW was readable 429 for most stations worked from EU on 20m . Using my GM vertical on 14 18 mhz and a Delta Loop on 30m 100 watts from home. Thanks again
Regards
Ian vk5cz …
Chaser Report.
Was Listening and calling on various DX spots from 05:30 and apart from one station in Cyprus on 14mhz band was dead here. But did work a few Sota later around EU. But I was on Parade for ever hopeful of a catch.
73’ Don GW0PLP (IO72)
Thank you to those who organised it and all the activators who made it out. Sorry I couldn’t join you on the hills, but had a good chase with 5 summits. I was about to pounce on DL4FO Chris who was booming into N England when he went QRT suddenly. Glad to hear it was “just” an antenna collapse and he was ok.
73
Was it just me or were the bands really THAT bad?
I put out calls on 20, 17 & 15m with absolutely no response. Tnx yo OH9XX for alerting me to a wrong frequency on 17m - I picked a spot without noise, unfortunately a little low in the band.
I got to test a couple of new antennas and have some changes to make to their support for next time.
The X108G seemed to work OK.
On 20m and 17m I had a horrible corse noise rolling up and down the band - not OTHR (but that came as well for a short time). I wonder if there is a new electrical installation (VDSL?) near to Rentschen or whether the noise was generated from the voltage regulator I use (but I haven’t heard it before if it was).
Thankfully 40 metres was fine for contacts around Europe and I heard one EA station working a (weak for me) VK - but I think both end were fixed stations.
At least the weather was OK - not sunny but over zeo degrees and no wind to speak of - so, good weather compared to the last few weeks.
I hope everyone enjoyed themselves and I wait to see what the “profis” like Mike 2E0YYY managed?
73 Ed.
2 Likes
Results from Paku ZL1/WK-195. ZL2AJ at the mic. Worked 14 summit to summit contacts from 13 unique summits - best dx from JA on 21 MHz. 10 home station chasers also in the log. First time using 5 MHz here (recently been given access). Enjoyable evening out. Shame the ionosphere didnt behave.
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you need to go digital logging 
Mine is already uploaded and ESQLs send via LOTW VKPORTALOG very highly recommended from me.
I didnt get to 15m I planned to but was buggered.
I had a hoot of a time, qualified on 1296, 144, and 14 MHz bands… Worked my good friends John VK6NU, Herbert OE9HRV and Mike 2E0YYY all S2S. More details on EU S2S after I upload my log.
In summary 18 S2S across VK, ZL and countries in Europe.
The 20m band opened early, loads of EU chasers around 0630 UTC. Numbers of ZL S2S and chasers is much higher than previous events. Good results all round. More to follow tomorrow, time is currently 21:15 almost time for sleep.
73 Andrew VK1AD
4 Likes
Brief summary:
My 1st ever hiking in the dark with my head torch.
Not too low temperature but VY windy.
Just very little bit of rain at the very end of the activation.
After +2 hours on the air from the summit:
15 QSOs
2 VK S2S
1 VK base station
1 ZL base station
4 EU S2S
Copied several other activators (i.e. HB9EKO/P, VK1MBE, VK2WP, VK1MIC…), on CW and SSB but they didn’t copy me. Shame…
Tough experience with getting up at 5AM, hiking in the dark and spending nearly 3 hours in the very windy summit.
I feel quite exhausted now, so I’m off for a bit of rest and something to drink+eat.
73,
Guru
1 Like
Well done for getting VK and ZL in the log - no such luck here but some nice European S2S contacts and everything has pretty much dried out now.
Mark M0NOM
Not just bad, terrible
Never had so deaf radio until now, about 3 hours spent on the summit and I heard absolutely nothing from Europe, barely could manage a CT station for s2s almost at noon, long after most of the activations went through. Fortunately I caught the LP window and had 4 s2s into VK which was really amazing, barely workable but at least they qualified the summit for me. If wasn’t those contacts I would’ve said that my radio was broken, I couldn’t hear the big EU chaser stations either, absolutely nothing.
But at least had my DX, never worked so many VK stations before, so big thanks to the organizers, and fingers crossed for better propagation next time.
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Or maybe fingers crossed for a new antenna. The GP in 20m band was a good idea as time as the propagation in 20m was acceptable inside EU. But now, with skip closing at more than 2000km due to the minimum of the solar cycle, a GP is almost useless. Of course, will give you some amazing DX but with high risk to not have 4 QSO’s on the summit.
Maybe a multiband linked dipole could be a better idea. An 40m/20m will be enough for SOTA purposes. You will loose the DX QSO’s but you will work all the chasers in EU very easy. And you will spend almost the same time & effort to deploy the antenna on the summit.