ARLA/CLUSTER: Resumo da Super Activação SOTA, realizada a 19 de Novembro, entre a Europa e a America do Norte

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Summit to Summit super activation November 19th. 2016

The Summits on the Air 'Summit to Summit' event between Europe and
North America on Saturday the 19th of November was a great success.

Despite cold and rainy weather across several parts of Europe, band
conditions being average and interference from contestants in the
LZ-DX contest, all activators who were out reported a successful and
enjoyable day.

Some stations racked up multiple S2S (Summit to Summit) contacts
across the three continents involved -- as well as Europe and North
America – there was one activator on holiday in the Canary Islands,
which counts geographically as Africa. The event was also an
opportunity for others to try out new rigs and other equipment,
especially antennas. Several activators had their first-ever
inter-continental summit to summit contact and were really happy about
that. Others went in small teams and enjoyed working together. Some
had tents to protect them from the weather. Others were really lucky
with the weather, while others got soaked.

Three bands were used for inter-continental contacts – 21, 18 and
14MHz. Most contacts were made on 20 metres; however those with
multiple band capability moved away from the contest traffic on 20
metres to the more peaceful 17 and 15 metres. The consensus seems to
be that from a propagation point of view 17 metres was the best;
however inter-continental QSOs were made on all three bands.

We even have some reports of chasers from VK catching some of the EU
activators via short path in the very early hours of the Australian
Sunday morning!

Sixty-six summits had been announced, but 77 were actually activated,
an increase on the 51 summits alerted and 73 stations taking part in
the VK-EU event a month earlier. It'll be interesting to see what the
numbers are for the North America-VK event. This may only now take
place in 2017 when the weather in the Northern Hemisphere improves.

The general feeling around the SOTA community is that having these S2S
events is both enjoyable and useful and many are looking forward to
more of them.

73
Ed DD5LP