Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
My Summits On The Air (SOTA) activation of Pikes Peak (W0C/FR-004) on June 20th qualified me for Mountain Goat, using only the VHF/UHF bands. Mountain Goat requires 1000 activation points using the SOTA activation point system. I’ve been working toward this goal for quite a while. I was doing mountaintop VHF activations before SOTA was … Read more
For Summits On The Air (SOTA), I’ve been using just the VHF/UHF ham bands, with the 2m band being the most popular. For most activations, I use a 3-element Arrow II yagi antenna that has a gain of about 6 dBd. Sometimes that extra gain makes the difference between completing a contact or not. Omnidirectional … Read more
A Handheld Transceiver (HT) is a convenient, compact all-in-one wireless device for FM operating on the VHF/UHF bands. HTs are sometimes referred to as a Shack On The Belt. There’s a lot to like about a transceiver that has wide frequency range, built-in antenna and power source. The attractiveness of these devices coupled with a … Read more
Sometimes radio amateurs suggest that phonetics are not needed on VHF FM. (See examples here and here.) Sometimes it even sounds like it’s a bad thing to use phonetics on FM. It is inefficient and slows things down. I can see the logic behind this because with decent signal strength, demodulated FM audio is usually … Read more
The conventional wisdom in amateur radio is that we should not call CQ when using FM on the VHF and UHF bands, especially on repeaters. The reasoning for this is that during normal VHF/UHF FM operating, radio amateurs are tuned to a specific frequency and will easily hear a call on FM. Compare this to … Read more
The Sundance Mountain Radio Association recently filed a Petition for Rulemaking asking the FCC to reestablish consistency between the call area indicated by an amateur radio callsign and its actual physical location. The current rules allow an amateur radio licensee to retain their current callsign when moving to a new call area and to operate … Read more