Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
You have probably heard about the FCC proposal to establish a $50 application fee for Amateur Radio licenses. This is part of an overall redesign of the FCC’s fee structure, affecting many radio services, not just amateur radio. The Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) is found in Docket 20-270. The public is invited to … Read more
One thing to watch out for when doing SOTA activations is the presence of strong Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) on some peaks. The typical scenario is that the summit is also an established radio site with transmitters that interfere with your ham radio operations. I use the VHF/UHF bands for SOTA, so I am writing … Read more
Congratulations to my wonderful spouse and favorite hiking partner, Joyce/K0JJW, for achieving Mountain Goat status for Summits On The Air (SOTA). On August 10th, she reached 1000 activator points while activating Pikes Peak (W0C/FR-004). She had quite the pileup on 146.55 MHz. Her best DX for the day was WY7ATH near Cheyenne, WY at a … Read more
The QSO Today Ham Expo is an exciting event that takes the fun of an amateur radio convention online! Congrats and thanks to Eric/4Z1UG who conceived the idea and took the initiative to make it happen. I was pleased to participate in the event, talking about Having Fun With VHF. In case you missed it, … Read more
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