Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
I often get asked questions about the band plan for 2 meters (144 to 148 MHz). Usually, this is about choosing a suitable simplex frequency, because the repeater frequencies are already coordinated and visible. I’ve written about 2m band plans before. This article attempts to cover the topic in a way that applies across the … Read more
McQuaid Butte (W0C/SP-019) is a 9043-foot mountain near our cabin in Park County. Joyce/K0JJW and I activated it for Summits On The Air (SOTA) way back in 2013 but for some reason, we had not been back to it. The access road (Salt Creek Road, FS 435) is gated closed from January 1 to June … Read more
In 2018, Joyce/K0JJW and I did a trip to the Black Hills area of South Dakota to do some SOTA activations: Dakota SOTA Adventure. We really enjoyed that part of South Dakota and figured we would be back. The Black Hills top out at ~7200 feet and the climbs are usually interesting but not very … Read more
August 1 & 2, 2020 Saturday and Sunday www.ham14er.org Amateur Radio operators from around Colorado will be climbing many of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains and Summits On The Air (SOTA) peaks to set up amateur radio stations in an effort to communicate with other radio amateurs across the state and around the world. Join in on … Read more
Many hams start out with ham radio by using FM on the 2-meter band (and maybe the 70 cm band). Clearly, the Technician license privileges are focused on VHF with 2 meters (146 MHz) being the most popular band. I wrote about common types of equipment that hams choose to support their operating habits here: … Read more
Gaining some elevation for VHF operating is always a good idea. Most of the time, we think about this in terms of operating from summits or towers. Another option is to go up in an aircraft…and maybe jump out of it. Carlos/KD9OLN did just that with a parachute mobile operation captured on video. In the … Read more