International SOTA Weekend 2-3 May 2009

Following a proposal from Sean Amesbury M0GIA, an International SOTA Weekend is to be held on 2nd & 3rd May 2009.

Of course, every weekend sees increased levels of SOTA activity throughout Europe, but it is hoped that this event will see many summit-to-summit contacts between different SOTA associations, and give chasers the chance to work activators from several different DXCC entities.

It is also hoped that some of the rarer SOTA associations - such as GD (Isle of Man), OD (Lebanon), GI (Northern Ireland), SV (Greece), W2 (USA), HB0 (Liechtenstein), ZS (South Africa) and EI (Ireland) - may have SOTA activity on this weekend, as well as the newer associations like TK (Corsica), SP (Poland), OH (Finland) and PA (Netherlands).

High levels of activity are anticipated from the well-established SOTA associations in G (England), GW (Wales), GM (Scotland), DM (Germany Low Mountains), F (France), HB (Switzerland), DL (German Alps), OK (Czech Republic), S5 (Slovenia), SM (Sweden), LA (Norway), HA (Hungary), ON (Belgium) and OE (Austria).

The SOTA alerts page (http://sotawatch.org/alerts.php) will be used, as normal, for activators to advise which hills they propose to operate from. Activity is expected on most HF and VHF bands, but the following band/mode combinations are almost guaranteed to enjoy lots of SOTA traffic: 80m CW/SSB, 60m SSB, 40m CW/SSB, 30m CW, 20m CW/SSB, 2m SSB/FM.

Live spots of current activity will be shown during the event, on http://sotawatch.org/spots.php

There is a good possibility of another International SOTA Weekend in August - the SOTAwatch website (http://sotawatch.org) will have all the latest news.

Summits On The Air (SOTA) is an awards programme for radio amateurs who soperate portable from mountain summits and hilltops. For more details, lists of qualifying summits, rules and guidance, please visit http://www.sota.org.uk