Is there any particular reason why the use of CW is so rare by VK activators? When looking at the spots of VK activations, everything seems to be SSB. When investigating further in the SOTA Database, I found that of 1344 logged VK activations so far, just 75 have included CW - or less than 6% of the total.
Given that the proportions are way higher in Europe and North America, I wonder if there is a particular reason why the mode is significantly less popular ‘down under’? Although upon noting this, there may well be people here now thinking of emigrating, right Brian?
Having said that, I was absolutely delighted to be chased on CW by a Ian VK5CZ during my activation of The Cloud G/SP-015 yesterday.
I find multimode (CW, SSB, PSK31) activations are great fun. I am tempted to try a five mode activation on 10m where there is sufficient space for wideband modes as well - CW, SSB, PSK31, AM, FM.
My guess is that CW is much less popular than voice modes down here.
Personally, my CW skills are horrible at present - I have rarely used the mode. Activators are making (most of the time) an adequate number of contacts to make a scoring activation simply using voice modes (mainly SSB). My impression is that the next most popular mode is 2 m FM. There are a small number of operators using CW.
We are on a large land mass, with a relatively small population (tiny in comparison the EU). Add to these facts the low proportion of the population that are licensed amateurs and then the proportion of licensed amateurs that are activators… Look at the stats - less than 120 activators so far on the database.
SOTA in VK appears to be growing fairly quickly.
I suspect that if you closely examine the stats, you will find most contacts to date are on 40 m SSB, with 2 m FM next.
We are still young in SOTA terms - VK3 is the oldest VK Association at around 18 months.
It will be interesting to see how things progress. For now, 40 m SSB gives me a fairly short period required to achieve a valid activation (most of the time). I could plan to spend more time on a single summit with different modes and bands. Alternatively, I can activate on 40 m SSB, qualify the summit and then attempt to move on to another summit to activate. Or I can quickly activate a single summit on 40 m SSB as a diversion on a trip which has another purpose.
The above may not be coherent - I am tired after having spent the last 4 days driving ( a bit over 2000 km), walking/climbing and activating summits in VK2 & VK3. I could have achieved more activator points with less travel, but it was a chance to help introduce a friend in VK2 to SOTA operations, plus activate some new summits.
I was going to suggest the population was 310m but that is for the USA alone and you did say North America, which is listed at ~530m. Which then got me thinking, so where are the other 210m people from? So 33m for Canada feels about right but I was surprised to see Mexico listed 112m, Cuba 11m, Haiti 10m, Dominican Republic 10m. I’d have been nowehere near had you asked me that question earlier today.
The CW light figures are interesting, well they are to people like me and Tom. They’re not what we’d expect based on figures from USA/Canada & Europe. Nothing wrong with them I hasten to add. Simply unusual. I must have a ponder over the early SOTA figures for the UK which may well show FM to be the most popular mode and few CW QSOs.
I wonder how much is down to VK being far enough away that SOTA contacts either way with other SOTA countries are going to be quite challenging. Realistically, VK activators are most likely to find contacts to help qualify the summit from within VK.
When I was out in Perth earlier this year I wished that some of the activators had given bands other than 40 metre and 2 metres a go, because neither of those bands were much use for a SOTA chaser in VK6. 40 metres was occasionally just about usable across to the eastern Aussie states around dawn in VK6, but I only ever managed to hear SOTA chasers.
I think, when (parts of) VK6 make it onto the SOTA activator map then maybe use of bands and modes better suited for DX might be encouraged, and folk over in Europe and Norh America might stand a better chance of catching VK summits by the way…
One complication is thrown in by the VK band allocations and plans, though. 40 metres (up to 7.3MHz) is available to all licence classes, and the band plan’s similar to ours. Similarly for 15 and 10 metres, and the main part of 80 metres (up to 3.7MHz). However, top band and the WARC bands are only available to Advanced VK licences, and 20 metres is only available to Advanced and Standard VK licences.
Thanks for a reply from Texas…and may I say I absolutely love your pedestrian mobile set up.
I even noticed a beverage there on QRZ actually called summit Hi Hi.
Im still chasing summits from across the pond to further my mountain hunter, but as yet have been unsuccessful…but that still gives me the thrill of the chase.
Russ - the raw figures for population sizes do not answer my question, which was asking about the unusually low proportion (6%) of CW activations compared to Europe (approx 30%) and North America (approx 54%).
I think that the newness of the programme in VK as suggested above, might have something to do with it, as it was certainly the case here in the UK that more widespread and regular use of CW came later. Although for UK activations alone, the proportion of activations that include CW is still down at 15%, surprisingly perhaps.
I learnt something from it Russ and that’s the fact the population of the rest of N. America excluding the USA is so large. It fair surprised me.
Rick M0LEP’s input that the band plan in VK has licence-level frequency allocations may explain the frequencies chosen. That came out when the 12m challenge was announced but I’d forgotten it.
Despite the modes chosen, growth in VK has been dramatic. It’s nice it has VK9 which gives exotic DX to SOTA (well exotic to many averagely equipped EU stations) and I know there are people working on a VK6 proposal. VK7 would be nice.
I was very glad to see spots for VK3ZPF on 12 meters yesterday. I listened intently for a long time. No luck, but I was there listening. Would things have been different if Peter were on CW? I dont know, but I did make the effort. I very much appreciate that VK activators are trying other bands, even if they prefer to use SSB. I just wish that more were trying CW and that the sun would get right!
it might explain why that 40m-SSB on 7.090 is the main spot by a huge margin.
As far as I could figure out during my visit to VK6 earlier in the year, 40 metres is THE band to use for chatting with your neighbours during the day. The bit up to 7.1 MHz is a primary amateur allocation. Amateurs have a secondary allocation from 7.1 MHz to 7.3 MHz, and there are still some broadcast stations in Asia using bits of that section, so if you want to avoid the broadcast QRM you stay below (or don’t go very far above) 7.1 MHz. The VK 40 metres band plan is similar to the UK one, with digital from 7.03 to 7.04, SSB from 7.04 up, and CW over the whole band. There’s a CW-only bit below 7.03 MHz.
I think that the newness of the programme in VK as suggested above,
might have something to do with it, as it was certainly the case here
in the UK that more widespread and regular use of CW came later.
Although for UK activations alone, the proportion of activations that
include CW is still down at 15%, surprisingly perhaps.
Tom M1EYP
I had a quick look at the database, and during the first full year of SOTA, using the All Associations filter, there were 78 activators using FM, 53 using SSB and 19 using CW; some of these activators were probably using more than one mode, but it gives some idea of the relative popularity of modes at that time. For comparison, in 2012 (the last complete year) there were 942 activators using FM, 793 using SSB and 487 using CW. About all you can deduce without a more detailed analysis is that whilst CW is still behind the phone modes, it now has a higher proportion of activators using it. This suggests that as SOTA matures in VK and people start to concentrate more on the other awards after reaching slothgoatdom, CW will become more popular.
In reply to M1EYP
Good morning i just found the topic great to work you Tom,on 12m.
Some rough stats in other words my “opinion” re cw ops. In vk on the biggest cw net in the land on our sunday mornings if 20 ops turn up for the net its considered a big net and i don’t know any SOTA people in that lot.
1 radio amateur ever 140 square KM and there is only about 13000 with a licence not everyone is “on air” . Average age is about 60 years for the radio amateur in vk so not a lot of hill walkers. I went to the biggest ham fest last Sunday and Paul and I did a promotion table for SOTA but looking at some of the people there they would have been puffing walking from the car park to the hall. I try every time i activate cw on higher bands i recon vk3byd is the only one in vk that i know of to activate summits on cw only he may tell you how hard that is to qualify the summit. I must say a few vk ops give cw a go and i a very proud of them for doing so. Skip distance is a problem in vk also for such long hall contacts our 20m signals are landing in the out back no body out there but camels and kangaroos. 40m is better with a mix of longer and short skip makes easy contacts during the day time, we are all afraid of the boogy man to be activating during the night. 73 de ian vk5cz …
I went to the biggest ham fest last Sunday and Paul and I did a promotion table for SOTA
Good stuff!
but looking at some of the people there they would have been puffing walking from the car park to the hall.
…but they might be encouraged to try chasing? A few extra chasers might make activations a little easier, and encourage more adventurous ones, perhaps?
In reply to KD9KC:
well above the European band-plan. Our CW portion runs from 7.000 to 7.125.
Technically, we could use CW in the bit above 7.050, as it’s “All modes”, but it tends to get “remarked upon” if we do…
7.175 to 7.200 is really a ZOO sometimes!
I’ve tried to use that bit for DX with friends in NA, and even at QRO levels it can be hard work. For QRP-ish SOTA-type activations it’s probably not worth the effort except at particularly favourable times of day (grey-line, anyone?) …
Thanks to Hawaii, it no longer matters as much for us in N. America.
There’re also the (very) occasional Madeira (CT3) and Canary Islands (EC8) activations that throw Africa into the Mountain Hunter mix.
