Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
When operating portable, I use Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries from Bioenno. Most of my portable operating is for Summits On The Air (SOTA) and I wrote about it here: My SOTA Battery Journey For POTA activations, I purchased a larger, 20 Ah Bioenno battery and use it to power a Yaesu FT-991 (and other radios). … Read more
This is a report on my single-operator contest effort during the ARRL November Sweepstakes (Phone) HF Contest. Some other potential titles for this article are: A Slacker’s Guide to Working the Sweepstakes How To Almost Work 50 States On a Weekend A Simple Way to Get On the HF Bands Contests on the HF bands … Read more
Joyce/K0JJW and I have been doing combined Summits On The Air (SOTA) and Parks On The Air (POTA) activations. Most of the SOTA summits we activate are inside parks as defined by POTA. Our primary focus is using VHF/UHF from SOTA summits with POTA is being a nice addition. Although the two programs have a … Read more
Adam/K6ARK recently posted this video of his 2m SOTA activation in California. Adam does a really nice job with his videos and this one is no exception. During this activation, he worked KE9AJ in Arizona at 256 miles. This was an FM QSO, with KE9AJ running 6 watts and K6ARK running over 120 watts. In … Read more
You may have noticed announcements about the Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) making substantial grants to various amateur radio and communications technology projects. Where did this outfit come from and how do they have funds to donate? This is my story about it, but I don’t speak for the ARDC. I am a member of … Read more
Ham operators make radio contacts on a routine basis. We call another station or another station responds to our call, we exchange some information, maybe chat for a while and then finish the contact, clearing out with our callsigns. Most of the time we clearly know whether we had a valid radio contact, commonly referred … Read more