The purpose of this post is to remind SOTA activatorts the next VK/ZL/JA <> EU HF S2S event is planned for Saturday 21 October 2017 from 06:30 to 08:30 UTC. The timing suits long path propagation between stations in VK/ZL/JA and Europe, south and north hemispheres. Sunset on the east coast of Australia is at 08:25 UTC with last light at 08:50 UTC. Local VK sunset times will vary for activators in VK5 and VK6.
This event is free and open to activators in VK, ZL, JA and Europe who are encouraged to use any mode. Given the capability of CW versus voice, interest in CW for international S2S QSOs is growing. Activators operating in past VK/ZL/JA <> EU S2S events have enjoyed numerous S2S QSOs on 20m and 17m, SSB and CW.
Chasers no matter where you are in the world, if you have time please join in for a chance to chase international SOTA peaks in both hemispheres.
I trust local weather conditions will allow you to participate in this planned international SOTA S2S event. Get your alerts posted early, alerts are starting to appear on SOTAWatch.
If wx permits, I’ll be joining the fun from a nearby FL/NO summit, with my friend Wil ,ON6EO.
I would love to do some FT8 too, but has anyone info on how to do SOTA-specific FT8 ?
How to call CQ SOTA, maybe replace LOC with SOTA ?
How and when send reference ? must ref be in every qso to be valid ? (we don’t do it in SSB/CW … mostly only for S2S).
Can we agree on a SOTA “watering hole” frequency (suggestion 1285 Hz +/- QRM … ?)
Any info (a document describing the procedure , links to websites, etc ) would be most welcome.
I tested if WSJT-X 1.8 rc2 will run on my cheap Linx 7" tablet and it does, and it makes the KX3 transmit, but haven’t made a qso yet.
(but I did see OE7FMH on the screen, so we would at least have ONE chaser, hi)
there are a few suggested ways to do this. My preferred one is just to send a free-form message with the summit reference like “SOTA XX/XX001” before I start to call CQ and then after each QSO. It wastes some TX cycles but it stands out in the decodes.
Thanks for taking the time to post a note. With just under 4 weeks to go, there are 11 proposed activations recorded at SOTAWATCH. I am confident the numbers will grow.
I would like to join you (and Sylvia) if that’s okay for you? Will see if I can get my FT817ND ready for FT8 digital mode operation asap. WSJT-X 1.8 is ready on my netbook.
2,5/5 Watt should be enough for that I hope …
Just ordered the parts needed yesterday so can’t say if it will work. But what I did was feeding audio to the netbook via a USB soundcard at the FT8 frequency and the calling station showed up (after the 15 seconds monitoring period that’s used with FT8).
So at least a basic start.
PTT and send will hopefully work fine too.
Some good news for this planned event. There’s been something of a renaissance in band conditions over the last three or four days. I’ve been receiving some good reports from VK, of contacts into G.
It seems the SFI has made some progress in the right direction…
Last weekend, our radio club took part in the Railways on the Air weekend and on Saturday, we worked VK3 and VK5 long path on 20m ssb in the morning, but more surprisingly VK1 short path at 1400z. Clearly, a four element beam helps. Okay, one swallow don’t make a summer, etc, etc…but any improvement is welcome.
I’m making one of my regular sojurns to North Wales (GW) tomorrow (Wednesday) and so, will be doing a quick activation of something, (summit depending on time and WX,) to check out the 20m band conditions from about 0600z… All calls welcome, hopefully, there will be some DX…
