SOTA - Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001

Cleeve Hill - 330m, 1 point

Association: England Region: Central England
Latitude: 51 55 11 N, Longitude: 2 0 21 W
Grid Reference: SO 996245, QTH Locator: IO81XW

Cleeve Hill! There's a surprise. My 26th activation of Cleeve, maybe I should have waited until Boxing Day :-)

Anyway, it was hard to climb out of bed, look out at the cold, damp, dark morning and drum up  the enthusiasm to go up the hill. Tempted as I was to just return to the warmth of the duvet, I got dressed, threw my kit in the car and set off in the dark.

Surprisingly, when I arrived at the car park at 0730, there were already three cars parked and their occupants out on the hill with their dogs.
I trundled across to the gorse bushes to set up in the their lee.

Called CQ at 0800, just as it was getting daylight.
An hour and seven minutes later I packed up with 28 QSO's in the bag.
It was a leisurely affair, QSO's taking longer with the MX and HNY exchanges!

Log

Summary

Log2Map

By the time I got back to the car, just after 0940, the car park was full and people were still arriving and parking on the grass verges. I headed home to see what awaited me from Santa.

That's it for 2015. I'm having surgery on 29th so will be out of action for a while...
MX es HNY
72

SOTA - Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001

Cleeve Hill - 330m, 1 point

Association: England Region: Central England
Latitude: 51 55 11 N, Longitude: 2 0 21 W
Grid Reference: SO 996245, QTH Locator: IO81XW

A quick run up the hill again today to try out 10 and 6 Metres.
Conditions on 6m had been good all morning, so I quickly grabbed the KX3 and made my way to the usual spot in the gorse bushes.

As luck would have it, the opening had more or less died by the time I got setup so was confined to some fruitless calling and chasing.
I did manage 2 QSOs on 6m with ES6DO and OH2G.
On 10 metres I managed 5 more contacts one a S2S with Roger, F5LKW on F/AM-613.
Reverting to the "low bands" brought in a second S2S with Victor, GI4ONL/p on GI/SM-015.

SOTA/QRPTTF - Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001

Cleeve Hill - 330m, 1 point

Association: England Region: Central England
Latitude: 51 55 11 N, Longitude: 2 0 21 W
Grid Reference: SO 996245, QTH Locator: IO81XW

The idea of today's outing was to make some stateside contacts for  QRP to the Field
It turned out to be quite a nice afternoon, but HF condx were very marginal.
I spent most of my time playing with various antenna configurations (all EFHW) rather than doing very much serious chasing or activating!

After a quick run on 20 metres I decided to play on 17 metres with a new EFHW tuner I have just built.
I'd brought along my antenna analyser so that I could do some wire trimming etc.
After I set it up with the analyser I proceeded to call CQ on an eerily quiet band for over 10 minutes without a bite!
Even RBNGate didn't pick me up. I eventually self spotted and still nothing.
To my horror I realised that the feeder was still connected to the analyser and not to my rig!
Plugging it back in made the band decidedly noisier, and a few contacts were made.

I did eventually manage to hook up with Barry, N1EU on W2/GC-026 for a genuine QRPTTF contact.

On top of that, SOTA S2S were made with YU1WC/p on YU/CS-046 and S57X/p on S5/TK-022

Anyway it was fun, dry and pleasantly warm out of the fresh breeze, on my 23rd activation of Cleeve Hill!

QSO map from Log2Map by ON6ZQ

SOTA - Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001

VK1NAM and several other VKs had expressed their intention, on the SOTA reflector, to activate VK summits over their SOTA Party Weekend with the intention of hopefully picking up some European S2S contacts.

With that knowledge, and the fact that propagation favoured a fairly narrow window of between 0700-0800z, I made my way to Cleeve Hill to see what was on offer.

In the end, not an awful lot!
I really wasn't hearing any DX and all the VK activity was on SSB anyway.

Regardless, it got me up on the hills on a nice morning before going to work, managing  34 QSOs, three of which were with M1BUU/p on G/NP-009, M1EYP/p on G/SP-015 and OK2BDF on OK/JM-004.
Maybe the VKs will appear next time.

QSO Map from Log2Map by ON6ZQ

SOTA - Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001

Cleeve Hill - 330m, 1 point

Association: England Region: Central England
Latitude: 51 55 11 N, Longitude: 2 0 21 W
Grid Reference: SO 996245, QTH Locator: IO81XW

The first activation of the year and what was a "coming of age" activation for me too. Yes, it was my 21st activation of Cleeve Hill! You'd think I'd be getting bored with it by now.

With a few spare hours, a point available and not wishing to travel too far afield, it made perfect sense.

There was a bit of snow and ice on the approach road, but nothing that couldn't be handled by my vehicle.

At the car park the hill looked crisp and clean with the fresh snowfall from overnight.

There were not many people around and I set up in the lee of some gorse bushes to get out of the bitter wind. It was a balmy 3ºC when I started operations.

Whilst conditions were hardly sparkling, I worked all bands, 40 through to 15 metres, for a total of 50 QSOs and 15 DXCC.

As usual the handwarmer came in useful, especially after struggling with trying to collapse the upper section of frozen pole with bare hands.

A nice winter day, if a little grey.

SOTA - Christmas Day - Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001

Cleeve Hill - 330m, 1 point

Association: England Region: Central England
Latitude: 51 55 11 N, Longitude: 2 0 21 W
Grid Reference: SO 996245, QTH Locator: IO81XW

A few people had indicated that they would be out SOTA activating on Christmas morning.
As it happened, I was working night shift on Christmas Eve, finishing work at 0700 Christmas Day.
I decided to throw the kit into the car the night before, and if the weather was OK and I was still feeling sprightly, I'd make my way to Cleeve Hill for an early Christmas morning activation.

It was cold and frosty when I left work, and as I climbed the hill, the roads were white and glistening with ice filled puddles. I got to the car park at 0730, still dark but with a hint of daylight in the eastern sky. There was one other empty car in the carpark and I could hear the occupants, but not see them, exercising their dogs somewhere out on the common.

I was set up and operational a couple of minutes before 0800, temperature was -1ºC and the dawn was rapidly approaching.
Twenty metres only gathered 5 contacts before I moved onto 30m. I think every op in DL must have been there and the pileup was quite a handful. During this time the sun poked it's head up with a flaming red sky on the eastern horizon. Had I not been knee deep in callers I would have taken some photos!

Dawn.

32 contacts later, and after a chat to the now many walkers passing by, I had a quick run on 40 metres to finish off the activation. The temperature had risen to a balmy 4ºC by the time I packed up at 0915.

Time to go home to bed.

I was home having my breakfast at 1000 and then off to bed for some rest.
An enjoyable Christmas morning, beautiful weather and surprising to see so many people out on the hill that early on the day.

SOTA - Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001

Cleeve Hill - 330m, 1 point

Association: England Region: Central England
Latitude: 51 55 11 N, Longitude: 2 0 21 W
Grid Reference: SO 996245, QTH Locator: IO81XW

Mighty Mite Weekend

In late November, the dates of the inaugural SOTA - "Might Mite Weekend", the brainchild of Richard, G3CWI were announced to the world:

***MIGHTY MITE WEEKEND***
The first Might Mite weekend will be held on the 7-8th December 2013. The aim is simply to get on the air and make SOTA contacts using Rock Mites or Rock Mite clones. Chasers and activators are equally welcome.

SOTAbeams will provide a little trophy for the person who publishes the most interesting account of their activities over the weekend here on SOTAwatch.

I had planned to operate this as a single band entry with my new Rockmite 20, which I'd put through some limited, successful field trials.

On Thursday 5th December my plans were shot to pieces!

It all started when the postman rang the doorbell to deliver a parcel. Now this is not unusual, especially at this time of year when other members of the household seem intent on emptying the warehouses of the on-line shops. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to find the parcel was addressed to me, even though I was not expecting anything to be delivered.

An unexpected parcel

The address label intrigued me. It had my name followed by G4ISJ. It couldn't possibly be a bulk load of 2000 QSL cards?
But no, the sender was "Evans form W. Yorks". The only Evans I know from that part of the world is Colin, M1BUU. Why would he be sending me a parcel?
The mystery deepened and I quickly found a knife to open the box. Through the bubble wrap I could see a shiny aluminium box glinting at me. Swiftly unwrapping the bubble wrap I'm left holding an "Ugly Mite 40", a Rockmite 40 clone, built Manhattan style.


But why?
There's an accompanying letter:

Dear Pete,
Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a new 40m QRP rig!
I do hope you like it and I'm hoping that you will give it a try during Mighty Mite Weekend.

Words fail me. Colin has built a 40m rig especially for me for the MMW!
It's imperative that I now put on a good show at the weekend....

UM #001

Built for G4ISJ by M1BUU

Bredon Hill - G/CE-003

Saturday dawned overcast but dry and I packed my bags now loaded with the RM20 and UM40.

First stop was G/CE-003, Bredon Hill. It's only about a 20 minute walk to the summit from the car park and I was soon set up and ready to roll. The untried UM40 was hooked up to my 40m EFHW. WOW- loud, loud, loud signals bang on 7.028Mhz. A contest and a FISTS activity day were in full swing. There was no way I could compete here with this racket.
So it's hook up the RM20 instead and things are a little better. There's still a contest running but my frequency seems a bit clearer. A couple of CQs and first out of the hat is Claus, DL1HBL followed by 16 further stations in the next 30 minutes, EA, OK, SP, OM, OH, DL, HB9, CT1, F, and OZ.
Happy that I've made a reasonable dent in 20m I decided to try again on 40 metres.

I owed it to Colin.
If anything, things are worse. I have terrible BC band breakthrough and I'm trying to contend with someone nattering on about cricket scores on top of a contest and FISTS stations...

Suddenly I hear the FISTS station, who was bang on my rockbound frequency, signing QRT.
A quick QRL?, no reply and I'm calling CQ.
The silence is deadly (well it would have been if it wasn't for the cricket and the contest stations).
A few more CQs and then, as if by magic, out of the hash pops PA3FF. You can always tell when RBNgate has worked it's magic! This was followed quickly, but with some difficulty, by 5 more stations; G, GM and DF. I found that if I switched my tuner to "tune mode" the Tayloe bridge provided enough of an input attenuator to reduce the BC interference to a workable level. Of course it also meant that my OP signal was similarly attenuated.
I'm uncertain as to how much power was actually making it to the antenna.
After seven seriously hard minutes and a lot more CQing I called it quits for 40.
After a cup of coffee and an attempt to warm up my frozen fingers I made another attempt on 20m.
This netted another nine stations adding OE, HA, S57 and SM to countries worked.

By 11:45 I was packed up and making my way to summit number 2, G/CE-001 - Cleeve Hill.

QSO Map from G/CE-003

Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001

After some lunch I was on Cleeve Hill and ready for operations by 13:50z Once again 40m was quite shocking! I opted for 20metres to start the running. I called CQ for 18 minutes before  I eventually got a call from CT2IWW. It was 4 more minutes before I was obviously spotted on SotaWatch, but even this only netted a further 6 callers. However, the second of those callers was the super loud signal of Barry, N1EU to add to EA, I, S5, and OK. I made another futile attempt at calling again on 40metres but my CQs were drawing no attention in amongst the general melee.

I checked Sotawatch on my phone and saw that I was not being picked up by RBN. I added a manual spot and was pleased to shortly hear G4AFI calling me. I managed to work another 9 stations, an improvement on the earlier activation, but it was very hard work. This added G, GM, DL, OH, and HB9 to the DXX total, the HB9 contact being a S2S with HB9TVK/p on HB/ZH-015. I'm sure there were other stations calling me but the QRM was intolerable. A big thanks to those that persevered and especially for the S2S! On top of all this, and not helped by wearing gloves, my key decided to randomly decide to stop playing ball.

It would randomly stop sending and drop dashes which lead to some very sloppy morse :-( Back on 20m I managed another 9 QSOs adding OE, HA, CT1 and YO. Particularly nice was the QSO with OH9NB. He was running 5 Watts and a good 599. When I told him I was running 300mW he also reduced power to the same level. He was still 599!

QSO map - G/CE-001

The cold was getting to me, 40 was not getting any quieter and happy with my lot I packed up after my first  Mighty Mite Challenge. A challenge it certainly was :-). If there's a next time Richard, can we have a non contest weekend? This is what I was confronted with!

Summary 

The challenge encourages people to get out on the hills with the simplest of rigs. The results show that even with wide open receivers and milliwatt power good results can still be achieved. OH9XX later sent me this video of my signal as received in Finland on 14Mhz.



 RBN shows the spread of my spotted signal which ties in nicely with the stations actually worked.

G4ISJ/P RBN spots 7/12/13

A lot of the effort obviously goes to the chasers, who go the extra mile to winkle out our tiny signals amongst the QRM. Thank you.

Overall I worked a total of 56 stations, 40 on 20metres and 16 on 40metres.
I worked 20 DXCC entities:
CT, DL, EA, F, G, GM, HA, HB9, I, OE, OH, OK, OM, OZ, PA, S5, SM, SP, W, YO.
Best DX was Barry- N1EU in the state of New York.

A big thanks to all the chasers and to Richard, G3CWI,  for coming up with the idea.
A very special thanks to Colin, M1BUU for building and providing me with a 40 metre Rockmite without which I'd be 16 QSO's down on that score above.
If anyone deserves to win this challenge it is Colin, and I duly nominate him to take away the trophy.
73/72
Pete

SOTA - Bike portable on G/CE-001

 A quick run up the hill today with the bike setup.

Arrival at the summit. 5 metre pole attached to bag.

Antenna deployed and rig ready

Rig ready to go straight from the bag

Log filling up quickly!

QRP TTF 27th April

QRPTTF

QRPTTF is an annual event to encourage QRPers to get out of the house and operate portable “from the field,” and of course, have fun. This year's theme was “Happy Trails” – that is, operating from or near an historic trail, and SOTA activators were once again encouraged to join in with the event. Although this is mainly a US centric event, it is starting to take on a more international flavour and I was aware that quite a few European SOTA activators would also be participating in the event. 

Being in the middle of a run of three night shifts meant that I'd have limited time to operate, but with reasonable weather forecast I was willing to give it a shot anyway.

Cleeve Hill

 My choice of operating location was my local SOTA summit, Cleeve Hill - G/CE-001. Cleeve Hill is the highest point of the Cotswolds at 1,083 feet (330 m). It commands a clear view to the west, over Cheltenham the River Severn and into Wales; and to the north over Winchcombe. It is a conspicuous outcrop on the edge of the limestone escarpment, (sometimes called the "Cotswold Edge"). In keeping with the Happy Trails theme, it is also crossed by the Cotswold Way, a 102-mile long-distance footpath,  officially inaugurated as a National Trail on 24 May 2007.

Set up in the lee of the Gorse bushes

 I awoke at 1300z after 5 hours sleep (after a night shift)to find a fine sunny day. However looking out over the hills I could see some big black thundery clouds.
By the time I'd packed, got my stuff together and driven to "my hill" it was just coming up to 1500z. It was still sunny but there was a huge black cloud heading my way. I took my tent with me from the boot of the car as there was every indication that I may well be in for a soaking.

I set up the antenna, an EFHW on a 7 metre roach pole, and pitched the tent in one of my little secluded spots in the lee of  some gorse bushes and got tuned up a couple of minutes after 1500z start time and  just as the first hailstones hit my head. I retreated for cover as the hail came down with a vengeance. Sitting inside my tent listening to 15m, I noticed a strange tingling effect in my ears from my earbud phones. Touching my ATS4 caused me to jump as I took a belt of static. I quickly pulled the antenna from the rig (useful things those phono plugs!) and threw the feeder outside in the hail. I had to sit it out for over 30 minutes listening to the hailstorm outside.

ATS 4b in full swing

Once the hail had subsided, a CQ on 15 metres immediately brought K4DY - Les in NC, followed by Barry N1EU on W2/GC-002 however I notice that Barry didn't log this contact even though I thought we'd completed OK. Rich N4EX was next in the log but with only a report of 439 I knew either conditions weren't good or my setup wasn't as good as usual. I could hear plenty of weak TTF signals on the band but most of them had corresponding very weak pileups and I just couldn't get through.

End of the day

A switch to 20m brought a short flurry of SOTA chasers from SP,OH,DL,OM,OK,G,CT1 before drying up. A coffee and a bite to eat and then some S&P for S2Ss brought OK2BDF/P on OK/PA-009 and OZ/LA1KHA/P on OZ/OZ-008, both on 30metres.
Another foray on 20m added LY,UT,EA4 to the country list.
A break for more hail and then back to 15m for a UT, K2JT - Joe and at last Bill, W4ZV on W4C/EM-047 who I seemed to have been chasing around all afternoon.

Sunset as I pack up

 An excursion onto 40m added LA, HA, DL and I in the shape of I/OE7PHI.
Conditions just seemed really poor with a high noise level, especially after last weekends good offerings so it was back to 20m to sweep up before I had to leave for work. In the bag this time were Ric - G3CWI/P on G/SP-004, N1EU again, this time Barry logged me :-) and the last contact of the night was Tom - M1EYP/P who I first read as N1?? for a final S2S on G/SP-015. I listened and called a bit more on 15m but I was cold, and I had to get packed up an get away. It was unbelievably cold as I packed up, rolling up the tent in a covering of hailstones froze my fingers.I was back to the car and drove straight into work for another 9 hour night shift at 2100z feeling a bit washed out :-(

I thought overall conditions were lousy but maybe it was just my setup.
A quick analyses on RBN between signals from G3CWI, M1EYP, G0PEB and myself show I was 6dB down on Richard most of the time. I really should have located to a better position on the west facing slope for a bit of "gain".









An enjoyable event none the less:
32 QSOs
16 DXCC - CT,DL,EA,G,HA,I,LA,LY,OH,OK,OM,OZ,SM,SP,UR,W.
6 S2S for 24 points.

Results here (placed 16th)