Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
Lately, I’ve been talking with people in search of basic radio communications for their friends or family. They end up talking to me because someone steered them to ham radio as a solution and I teach ham radio license classes. Of course, I am happy to pull them into the wonderful ham radio world but … Read more
The Summits On The Air (SOTA) program originated in the United Kingdom but has propagated to most countries around the world. The program came to Colorado on May 1st, 2010 with Steve/WGØAT sending a CQ from Mount Herman, just west of Monument. Today, the SOTA program in Colorado (called WØC-SOTA) is very active with roughly … Read more
When discussing signal levels and power output, hams like to say things like: Using higher power isn’t important because it only gives you one additional S unit and You’ll lose some power in the coax but you won’t even notice a few dB These statements are often true and at the same time may be … Read more
The Summits On The Air (SOTA) program was designed with hiking/climbing in mind but some SOTA summits have roads that go to the top. Some notable ones that come to mind are Pikes Peak (W0C/FR-004), Mount Scott (W5O/WI-002), Mount Coolidge (W0D/BB-012), Sandia Crest (W5N/SI-001), Mount Greylock (W1/MB-001) and Mount Mitchell (W4C/CM-001). There are also summits … Read more
A perpetual ham radio question is always which antenna is best? I have several different antennas and antenna configurations for working VHF SOTA and decided to do some comparisons. To test out some of our 2m SOTA antennas, Joyce/K0JJW and I went to Eagle Rock (W0C/SP-113) with an elevation of 9710 feet. I did the … Read more
When on a road trip, I usually monitor the 2m FM calling frequency, 146.52 MHz. For the most part, that frequency is pretty quiet but sometimes a fellow traveler, camper, SOTA activator or random ham shows up on frequency. I don’t usually bother with tuning into local repeaters as that requires frequent adjustment of the … Read more