JW SOTA 2022

Our SOTA activities at Svalbard are over for this time. JW/MS-095 Knapen and JW/MS-037 Arctowskifjellet were successfully activated. QSOs are already uploaded to to SOTA database. Knut JW9DSA will stay here for some days more to run radio with JW4D group. We will come later with some highlights and propagation experience. Thanks for chasing! 73, […]

We were lucky with propagation with openings both to NA and Asia on 17m and 20m, some QSOs were made at 30m band. Totally we made 259 QSOs. Most exciting it was to get ZL1TM on 20m SSB. Thanks to all chasers!

Yesterday five SOTA activators met for a dinner together at Kroa. SOTA/ham radio stories were shared and some serious planning were made ;). DX-pedition team had a pleasure to meet Solveig who has recently began to activate local SOTA tops. 73 de JW/LB8CG!

First operators has just landed at Longyearbyen! We are waiting just for Knut LA9DSA which wil come later. Landing was spectacular with the blue skies over the island. We are looking forward activity from JW5E.

Operating 100W under cold temperatures (we expect about -15C at the summits) requires good batteries. To be ready for 2 hours of operations we prepared 6 LiFePO4 batteries of total capacity of about 32Ah.

The first antenna which will be used during our DX-pedition is ready. This antenna will be used primarily for CW station. Initial vertical antenna tuning were performed at football field near my house. For the field trial I went to LA/AH-009 to try it over the rocky ground. Tests went fine and resonance curves moved […]

LA9DSA tested the backup rig for FT-8 at https://sotl.as/summits/LA/HM-216 on February 26, 2022. The equipment is a KX3 in a Pelican 1200 case and LiFePO4 internal batteries. It is a kit from Radioset-Go. The PC is a Microsoft Surface Pro 7.