Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
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
In January 2021, I wrote about the North America Adventure Frequency (NAAF) which originated in the North America SOTA community. About a year later, how is this working out? Is anyone actually using it? A few key points to remember: The NAAF is 146.58 MHz. This frequency is in addition to, not a … Read more
I previously wrote about some of the tools I use for managing SOTA and POTA logs. See Tips and Tools for Managing Logs. I continue to learn about the file formats and various tricks for generating the logs. Some of this is not well-documented…at least I haven’t found it…so I am sharing what I’ve figured … Read more
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
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