Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
It’s been a while since I’ve done a January VHF contest from a mountaintop so I decided to give it a try from Mount Herman this year. The ARRL recently changed the contest rules to allow the use of the national 2m fm calling frequency for contests. See Coming Soon: 146.52 MHz in ARRL VHF … Read more
Summits On The Air (SOTA) operating events are a great way to promote activity and create opportunities for summit-to-summit radio contacts. Here’s the 2016 calendar, an update of the 2015 list suggested by Guy N7UN. Many of these dates are aligned with VHF events but there will be HF activity as well. Jan 30-Feb 1: … Read more
I’ve often said that Mount Herman (W0C/FR-063) is the most (ham) radio active mountain in Colorado. Many of us have operated from that summit for VHF contests, QRP events and Summits On The Air (SOTA). Of course, I didn’t have any data to back that claim…until now. A review of the cumulative SOTA activations in … Read more
On the last day of the year, it seemed like a good idea to get in one more SOTA activation. It turns out that I had not been up Mt Herman (W0C/FR-063) all year, even though it’s close by. See this page for the trail description. Joyce KØJJW and I decided to hike up in … Read more
On Sunday, I noticed that Brad WA6MM posted that he planned to activate Dakota Hill (W0C/SR-051) for Summits On The Air (SOTA). Dakota is not a good VHF shot from my house but I was planning to be mobile out east towards Black Forest that morning, so it was worth a try. I texted Brad … Read more
For the 2015 Colorado 14er Event, Joyce K0JJW and I activated Mount Antero (W0C/SR-003) on the 2m and 70 cm bands. Alan NM5S joined us on the summit, operating mostly HF plus some 2m fm. We took our Jeep Wrangler up the moderate 4WD road and parked at 13,800 feet. This makes for a very … Read more