Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
In May, we met up with our friends Paul/KF9EY and Beth/KB9DOU for a trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Joyce/K0JJW and I had been on the parkway before but had not completed the whole route. We all thought it would be a great trip to do together, in about a week, so we would not … Read more
We have been looking for an opportunity to activate a SOTA summit in our home state of Indiana. Joyce/K0JJW and I were both born there and misspent our youth there. Of course, you might be thinking “there are SOTA summits in Indiana?” Yes, there are three. Two of them are on public land, one is … Read more
Amateur radio has a long tradition of innovation concerning technology and radio operating practices. This includes innovating with the use of phonetic (or fonetic) alphabets, as previously reported here: Twisted Phonetic Alphabet Today, April 1st, Steve/KM9G reports on the latest set of fonetics from the AFRL:
When doing VHF activations for Summits On The Air (SOTA), the radio range is dependent on the height of the summit and the surrounding terrain. The Radio Mobile website from Roger/VE2DBE is a great tool that can be used to estimate the radio range from a particular site. Repeater system owners often use tools like … Read more
Doing a simultaneous activation of a Summits On The Air (SOTA) summit and a Parks On The Air (POTA) park is becoming more common. There is a lot of crossover between the two programs. Here in Colorado, many of the SOTA peaks are in national forests or national parks, making them an ideal double activation. … Read more
One of the most useful electronic test tools available to us is the digital multimeter (DMM). There are many different models to choose from but for less than $50, you can get a decent quality meter that measures DC and low-frequency AC voltage, current, and resistance. Using such a meter, with auto-range capability, is pretty … Read more