The Summits On The Air (SOTA) program offers a good set of tools for chasing and activating summits. Outside of the SOTA program, many different outdoor and hiking apps are also useful for planning and doing activations.

The tools I use have changed over time, so here’s an inventory of what I am currently using. This is not an exhaustive list, but my own personal, commonly-used list of tools. Recall that I typically chase and activate summits only on frequencies above 50 MHz, which affects how I use these apps.

Chasing

SOTAwatch is the main website for setting and monitoring Alerts and Spots, always useful.

The GoTo SOTA app on my iPhone is SOTA Goat, which can set and display alerts, spots, and other information. This app is very handy and useable.

I recently wrote about HamAlert, which I normally have set to let me know of any SOTA spot in the state of Colorado (W0C Association). I am looking for summits that I can work on VHF, so I monitor for only in-state activations.

Planning

For planning, the SOTA Atlas (Sotl.as) is an excellent mapping website. It offers some good filtering tools to view such things as unactivated summits, frequently-activated summits, summits that you have not activated this year, etc.

SOTA Atlas does more than just mapping. It includes pages that show other SOTA information.

Of course, the repository for all things SOTA is the SOTA Database. One handy feature for planning purposes is the Resources section associated with each summit. Here, your fellow SOTA enthusiasts may provide links or tips concerning activating a particular summit.

For more detailed mapping around a particular summit, I use GaiaGPS. I pay for the premium service that provides access to a wide variety of maps, which can be essential for finding the best access and approach to a summit. I use their iOS app, which I load with waypoints for summits in areas that I expect to activate.

Lately, I’ve been using AllTrails to gather route information for a particular hike or summit. There are many hiking apps out there, and you probably have your favorite.

Alerting & Spotting

To set an Alert or Spot, I use either SOTAwatch or SOTA Goat, already mentioned above. An Alert provides advance notice of an activation, while a Spot indicates that an activator is on the summit and on the air.

I have also found it helpful to maintain an email list of potential VHF chasers in my area, and I will drop them a quick email indicating that I’ll be on a summit at a particular time and frequency.  These folks may or may not pay attention to SOTAwatch, so pinging them via email lets them know a local activation is coming.

One app and website that I only use occasionally is SOTAmat (“SOTA Mate”). This is a very clever app that supports SOTA (and POTA) spotting when normal internet connectivity is not available. I have not used this app very often, but when I did, it was super helpful.

Logging

My hiking partner Joyce/K0JJW and I usually log on paper during an activation. When we get home, I transfer the paper log into an electronic format using the G0LGS SOTA Editor. This is the best, simple SOTA logging program I have found. Sorry, it only runs on Windows. It stores the log in CSV format, but it can also export the info into ADIF.

Sometimes I need to edit and manipulate the log file, especially when I do a combined SOTA + POTA activation. ADIF Master is an excellent tool for editing ADIF files. (Sorry, Windows only.)

Summary

This is an overview of the main tools I use for SOTA. It is quite awesome that we have these apps and websites available for free or at a very low cost.

What tools are you using for SOTA?

73 Bob K0NR

The post My Favorite SOTA Tools appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Map of IARU contacts

This weekend, I took part in the IARU contest and entered the CW category. The solar conditions made the contest a challenge with G1 and G2 conditions along with a bouncing ball Bz. This made QSB an issue, along with very few DX contacts in the log. I pulled the plug for a while on Saturday, when on 20m, my signal was almost being treated as  ground wave from the propagation gods. I did get on early Sunday morning Conditions on 40m were not too bad. I stayed with it until the end of the contest, which was 9 am local time on Sunday. On Sunday, I was able to make it to ZW5B and ZL6HQ on 40m, who both were booming in. 

Final score

Overall The conditions made this contest a part-time effort, as I am not going to sit in the chair and endlessly call CQ contest. I hope that soon the Genvyshev gap (if that is what we are having) comes to an end soon. I am missing the great conditions we were having. What is the Genvyshev, you ask? Well, it is explained very well by fellow blogger Bas PE4BAS here

Hello and welcome to the 586th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short topics episode, the hosts discuss DX Engineering teaming up with Q5 Worldwide, Insecure Boot, Linux desktop market share, evince, JS8Call and much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

In this episode, we join Martin Butler M1MRB, Dan Romanchik KB6NU, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief, and the episode's feature is Ham Radio Friedrichshafen 2025 Part One.

We would like to thank Dino Papas (KL0S), Philip Heckingbottom (VK6ADF) and our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

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• Bye Bye Friedrichshafen for another year!

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• 100th Anniversary of JARL and Amateur Radio in Japan

 The other day, I battled the heat and installed more radials for my Hustler 4BTV. I have an extra 14-gauge wire left over from when I first installed the radials, and for some time, I was planning to install the remainder, but never got around to it. Well, it is now done, and I am about 15 radials richer, bringing the total to close to 40. After the install, I was wondering if my radiation pattern has changed at all? I connected my WSPR transmitter over the period of 24 hours. For some reason, when I set it up, it was only sending signals out on 20 and 40m. I found out I neglected to save the settings, and the 20m and 40m setup was from the last time I used it. So I only have at this time data for those two bands. 

Below are the patterns before the radial additions. 

After the radials upgrade