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Summits On The Air

ExGEO

Rank II
Launch Member

Enthusiast I

I'm a member of ARES in Austin (Travis and Williamson counties) so I could browse their site for information in that area. I've been a ham for 11 years now, but wasn't active much when I lived in park city. Thanks for the information. I'll be sure to reach out when the widow maker and I are headed your way. I was a guide in Moab once upon a time and I still frequent the area.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using OB Talk mobile app
 

UtahOverlander

Rank V
Launch Member

Off-Road Ranger I

Hams are not too active on this side of the Wasatch. That's Awesome that you were a guide in Moab. I've just started travelling there to do some minor trails. I won't be doing any rock crawling. Just some longer, easier trails. Snow there now. Touch base when you're headed this way.
 

ExGEO

Rank II
Launch Member

Enthusiast I

I dont do any crawling. I have an H3 haha. I know some really cool spots out there but we will have to talk about it in person. ;-) there are a ton of trails out there that most stock rigs can do, but they don't get a lot of traffic because they aren't really advertised.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using OB Talk mobile app
 

Radiola

Rank III
Launch Member

Influencer II

SOTA is short for Summits on the Air I think this is something we can do as a group But you will need to have your Amateur Radio License ( which is not that hard to get .....) here's a link that tells you more about it.

http://www.sota.org.uk/
 

TerryD

Rank VI
Launch Member

Member III

I'm wanting to get into SOTA as there are many listed summits around my house, but I've got to find a rig. I'm learning code so I can get a little QRP tin- style radio, but I've considered getting the Bit-X QRP SSB rig to build as well!
 

Radiola

Rank III
Launch Member

Influencer II

I'm wanting to get into SOTA as there are many listed summits around my house, but I've got to find a rig. I'm learning code so I can get a little QRP tin- style radio, but I've considered getting the Bit-X QRP SSB rig to build as well!
I just saw where your located :) you ever heard of a town called Deerfield?
 

Radiola

Rank III
Launch Member

Influencer II

It's 6 miles north of Goshen and 20 miles west of Staunton in the southwest corner of augusta county.
 

Kevigizmo

Western Europe Moderator
Launch Member

Influencer II

Sota is Awesome - the number of times ive hunted for Sota stations to get the summit activation logged

Great fun with combining the love for radio with outdoors on a mountain top running QRP (low power) :)
 

brien

Sonoran Space Program
Staff member
Moderator
Member

Off-Road Ranger I

This morning I did my first ever CW activation for Summits on the Air. I did technically make two CW contacts during one of my previous SSB activations a few months back, but this was the first time I completely left the mic at home. I was extremely nervous while heading up the mountain, and completely overwhelmed with anxiety and fear of failure when i first turned the radio on. With a shaky hand I started calling CQ, and as soon as the Qs started rolling in I began to relax just a bit. In my best SSB activations i'd get maybe 8-10 QSOs, this morning, operating only in CW, i got... drum roll......

43 QSOs!!! 4 of which were Summit to Summits!!

I activated W7A/AW-001 Mt Lemmon (9159', 10pts) using my KX2, 10W to my end-fed non-resonant 58' inverted L. With the internal ATU on my KX2 I can tune all bands from 60m up to 10m and I worked every single one of them. Made Qs on all bands as well:
  • 60m: 6 Qs
  • 40m: 6 Q including 2 S2S
  • 30m: 6 Qs
  • 20m: 15 Qs including 1 S2S
  • 17m: 5 Qs
  • 15m: 3 Qs including 1 S2S
  • 10m: 2 Qs
I'm going to be putting together a longer vlog on my YouTube channel about the whole thing, but here's a clip of one of my QSOs. I'm still working to become proficient at morse code (only started learning it about 4 months ago) so you'll notice that my head copy has not quite caught up with the speed of my hearing, so I had to ask this poor guy to repeat his completely copyable call sign again, LOL. Thankfully I chase him (via CW) quite often so he wasn't a total stranger.

I've translated the morse code as captions for those who haven't seen the light yet, just enable [CC] and you'll see 'em.

 

Lost-Again

Rank V
Launch Member
Member

Enthusiast III

Yeah.... I forgot to quote
"What kind of 2-meter coverage is out there? When I was in Austin we had several single repeaters. I've been in Florida for a while and the gulf coast ARC has a massive network on 70-cm. I'm looking to get back to Utah or to Montana. Someday I'll sit for general and extra, but I have to get back to America first.
KE5HLQ"
 
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