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Happy Birthday WOTA
21 March 2012 | by Happy Birthday WOTA. What do you get a portable operators scheme for its birthday? I simply have no idea.
For those who aren’t too sure what it is. WOTA is a bit like SOTA but for the Wainwright Fells in the Lake District. If you don’t know what SOTA is then one explanation is portable operations from summits (or fells if you live here in the lakes). Or as I like to describe it to non hams, working you way up a fell till you get to the top, looking at the view for a bit then getting out a radio (generally in the fog or rain, in the lake district) and saying ‘hello its me, can you hear me?’ ‘yes, it’s me, can you hear me?’ ‘yes, good stuff, who’s next’. I don’t think I’ve had too many positive looks giving that explanation but its better than trying to explain what that pole sticking out of your rucksack is in a howling gale.
Anyway,m back to the point. WOTA was devised by Julian, G4ILO and the first activations have been tabled as the 21st March 2009. So all I can say is happy birthday and my XYL wants a word with you because I’ve not managed to fix the downstairs toilet whilst I’m out operating from a fell top.
3 Responses to “Happy Birthday WOTA”
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Alex, your comments caused me to research just what Who’s On The Air (WOTA) might be, having never heard of it before. I have followed the Summits On The Air (SOTA) activities with some sideways interest since one of our local club members has put a few summits on the air himself (he’s a QRP backpacking op). I might suggest to you and all bloggers that, for the benefit of the more uninformed of us, both newbies and old timers (50th year as a Ham Op), following a common practice among authors, that the full name of a mnemonic be used in the first occurance of an entry followed by the mnemonic in parenthesis, which can then be substituted throughout the rest of the article. It saves a lot of head-scratching trying to resolve the mnemonic into something intelligible. Nevertheless, thanks for raising my awareness of the WOTA toolset. Now that I know what WOTA is and how it can help one find those missing contact destinations, all I must do is to install and learn how to use a logging application. I’m still using pen and paper… oh woe is me! Then, I can take advantage of this helpful application… assuming I can ever get my HF antennas back into the ether. Hi Hi. Good luck and Blessings to all! TNX AGN ES 73-dsEMX
Alex…
P.S. I was taken aback when the first two results of my WOTA Google search returned both the Washington State and Wisconsin Occupational Therapy associations. Fortunately, several entries beyond that was the Who’s On The Air website reference. Ya had me goin’ there for a sec. 73 agn, Doug
Thanks for your comments Doug. I try to put in a link in the post when I refer out to something or somewhere else. I suppose this time I got lazy or missed it off.
I wonder if the Washington State and Wisconsin Occupational Therapy Associations have a shack? I think that would be just too much of a coincidence.
Alfred Wainwright is a name that defined the lake district fells. He produced a number of beautifully illustrated and very detailed guide books which are still very relevant today. There are 214 in total to activate and a number of outlying fells which appear in later guides. So far just 2 people have activated all summits. I think it will take me a few more years to achieve that.
73
Alex