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I did my first SOTA activation in March of this year. Since then I have accumulated 195 activator points. I am driven by goals, and I really wanted to have more than 200 points by the end of the 2013, but time is running short. As I have mentioned in the past the closest SOTA summit is a 7 hour drive for me from my home QTH. However, this summer I acquired a "get away" QTH in Santa Fe, NM and try to get out there as often as possible and when I do, I try to activate a summit or two. So since I am off work all of next week I thought the time was perfect to come out to Santa Fe for a few days and try to get an activation or two in. I desperately wanted to cross the 200 point threshold at a minimum.

Enter the weather. The forecast for my entire stay was for snow. The higher elevation peaks are out of the question, but there might be some possibilities for some the peaks in the 7,000 ft ASL range. Saturday had the best forecast, only 1-2 inches accumulation, but Sunday was for 2-4 inches.

So based on some advice on local summits from Fred, KT5X (aka WS0TA), Ortiz Mountain (W5N/SE-043) was my choice. Better yet, it was a 6 point summit which would move my Activator score to 201 points. I had to do it on Saturday or risk being snowed out.

This would be an opportunity to work on my winter approach to activations, from clothing to equipment to hiking in the snow. Cris, my XYL agreed to join in the fun.

Cris headed up the mountain

As we approached the mountain it started to snow. I had hoped to get the activation done before the snow started, but that wasn't going to happen. It wasn't a heavy snow, but steady.

We found our way to the base of the mountain and quickly learned that finding 4WD roads in the snow isn't that easy, however we managed to navigate our way to within 600 vertical feet of the summit and from there packed our gear and headed up the mountain.

The hike wasn't bad, hiking up a 4WD road to the shoulder and then up to the summit. The summit probably had 4 inches of snow and more was falling. I quickly found a decent operating location and began the set-up. This day I was using my FT-817, the trail friendly LNR 10-20-40 EFHW with a T1 tuner.



Antenna Deployed

The set-up went well and when I finished I tuned the radio to 14.061 to look for an open spot to call CQ and realized this was a major contest weekend. Thank goodness I brought the tuner.

So I set up on 17 meters and called CQ. After finally getting a spot for my frequency, my paddle decided to only send dits, I brought out my trusty micro-key, but had to remove my gloves to operate it. The temperature was 27 F, so my hands got a little cold.

My wife in the mean time had found warmth by getting the Bothy Bag we brought along. Bothy Bags are mini-shelters that are excellent for getting out of the cold or rain.

I made my requisite QSO's, working both coasts with my QRP signal, plus a few more and decided to declare victory and head back down the mountain. The snow had stopped for the trip down which we managed at a comfortable pace.



Operating

It was a fun day. Enduring the elements, summiting a mountain and getting 6 SOTA points. We felt accomplished when we were done and celebrated with some Mexican food in Santa Fe.


View from the Top

Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Curacao, an island near Venezuela, is a new DX country in my log book. On November 19th, I easily worked PJ2/ N0YY and on November 22nd I easily worked PJ2/ W9NJY.

I’m amazed this station in South America hasn’t been worked more than I see on the DX Clusters. I spotted it for the second time yesterday and saw very little activity following up on the site.

As most of the islands in the Caribbean area, tourism is always a factor in their economy. In the area of “space tourism” Curacao is one of the tops in the field.

The Lynx Space Plane is an interesting concept. The pilot and “one” tourist can experience “sub orbital flight” where the stars shine steadily, the arc of the earth is below you, and you experience the feeling of weightlessness. I would imagine, also, a great place to use a handi-talkie on the VHF and the UHF bands. Expected to be viable in 2014, this “sub orbital spacecraft” will take you there for a fee of around $100,000.

Both these contacts were on the 10 meter band and pushing a 599+ signal into West Virginia.

John Smithson, Jr., N8ZYA, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from West Virginia, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

In the past two weeks, the results of several ham radio contests from last summer were posted. The typical contest takes months for the official results to be finalized and I have usually forgotten about the contest by then. The more serious contesters share their results via the 3830 web site so they can get an early read on how they did relative to their peers. But you need to be patient for the official results.

In the ARRL June VHF Contest, I placed in the top ten for the new Single Operator 3 Band category. This category is restricted to 50, 144 and 432 MHz, which is a good match to my radio interests. We had good 50 MHz conditions in Colorado (relative to other parts of the country), so CO stations seemed to score well.

Speaking of Colorado, in the Colorado QSO Party I finished first in the Phone – Low Power – Single-Op category. I was actually not that pleased with my score this year (45,500), which was considerably less than my score from last year (76,464). Oh well, I will invoke the Universal Purpose of Amateur Radio and say I had a great time in the contest, regardless of the score. Thanks to the Pikes Peak Radio Amateur Association for sponsoring this event.

The ARRL Field Day results are also posted. Joyce K0JJW and I did a one transmitter (1B) operation from the cabin using the club call KVØCO, resulting in a modest score (454). We mostly made phone contacts on 20m, 15m and 6m. We had some nice sporadic-e on 50 MHz, which is always a treat. Remember, the key to a fun Field Day is: Season To Taste.

73, Bob K0NR

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Following the launch of the eagerly awaited Funcube-1 (now also known by it’s official AMSAT designation of AO-73), I thought it would be fun to try and receive some telemetry from it.

During local daylight hours, the satellite will send telemetry, with the intention that it will be available for schools to receive and decode and then at local dusk, the satellite will switch into Amateur Radio mode, with a 435/145MHz inverting transponder (SSB/CW).

At the time of writing, the satellite has just been switched into autonomous mode when it will switch between telemetry and the transponder automatically as described above. If that works out ok, it will stay in that mode.

To decode the telemetry, you need the Funcube Dashboard software, which you can download here

Setup is fairly easy, although is only currently available for the Windows platform and you’ll need the .Net 4 framework available on your PC. As I don’t have a Funcube Dongle Plus, I needed to use my Windows soundcard, connected to the FT847 via the usual G4ZLP interface. I had a slight false start when it didn’t seem to be selecting the soundcard, but that was easily resolved in File/Settings.

Then it’s just a question of setting Capture from Soundcard in the software and waiting for the satellite. My best antenna (given that I did not want to be outside waving the Elk antenna in the cold) was the V2000 collinear.

Fortunately, the first pass that I tried was quite a high one and I was able to receive quite a few good frames – some screenshots of which are shown below

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

I worked seventeen stations with this “Special Event Station” of the West Virginia Chapter of the NAQCC club on Wednesday afternoon and sent an E-QSL Card to those who worked me. Fort Scammon isn’t well known to those living in my city, but during the Civil War, this artillery site was critical to controlling the river traffic on both the Kanawha and the Elk Rivers.

I created the above (sample) card with the simple “paint” program which comes with the Microsoft products on my windows computer. When I upload the card to my E-QSL account and enter the contact information of the stations I work, they’re displayed nicely along the bottom of the card.

The 19th and 25th Presidents of the United States (Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley) directed a dozen cannons from this high spot in Charleston where “flatboats” floated precious “salt” downstream to the Ohio River. Salt was a very valuable commodity in those days for the preservation of fresh meat. The production of high quality “salt” was one of the founding industries of the Kanawha Valley.

 It took me a little over an hour to get set up and on the air but I felt this was one of only a few good days left before snow flurries begin to start flying this weekend. I used my PAR “end fed” Zepp antenna which was cut for 40-20-and 10 meters with my Icom 703 at about four watts to work stations in eleven different states.

I was able to work North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Massachusetts, Kansas, New York, Illinois, Maine, and Canada.

The most distant station I worked this day was N1NUA (Joan) in Maine at 812 miles.

John Smithson, Jr., N8ZYA, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from West Virginia, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

I should have posted this earlier, as now it’s Thursday …….

This weekend is the CQ WWDX Contest, one of the “Big’uns”.  This is one where a lot of folks travel to distant destinations, just for participation in the contest. So all during the week, visitors as well as indigenous Hams have been tweaking their equipment, and have been getting on the air to try things out.  As a QRPer, this is a good thing to take advantage of. The bands are full of DX and now is your chance to work it. Pickings are good and I have worked Cape Verde Island, Peru, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Morocco, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Bermuda – all with 5 Watts in just within the last few days.

The bands are expected to be in good shape for this weekend.  So if you have the time, you can get on and you can net a lot of DX.  If you’ve never started your QRP DXCC, now is the time to begin!  If you go all out, I am willing to bet that you could conceivably earn it this weekend.

For the new QRPer, there are some things to keep in mind. At the beginning of the contest, code speeds are going to be fast. Some of these guys will sound like a buzz saw!  Don’t get discouraged.  The DX will keep on sending their calls a lot, so if it takes multiple attempts for you to copy, you’ll get plenty of them.  Towards Saturday night into Sunday, when some of these guys get tired, they tend to slow up a bit, too.  A tip to keep in mind is that the slower speed DX stations tend to congregate UP, towards the top edges of the CW bands, so that’s a good place to start.  However, if you make a good effort to copy code that is faster than what you are used to, I can pretty much guarantee a 10% or better improvement on your copy speed by the time the contest is over.

The loudest stations are probably running the most power, but they probably also have the best antennas.  Cherry pick those, and they’ll probably have an easier time hearing you, rather than the guy half way around the world who is running 100 Watts to a dipole only 25 feet up.  You may work him too, but it will probably be a bit harder.  Another thing to keep in mind, is that as the contest winds down on Sunday afternoon into Sunday night, the hard core contesters will be desperate for points.  It’s more likely they will take their time with you, if you happen to have a weak signal on their end . REMEMBER – QRP does NOT necessarily mean weak signal! If propagation is favorable, and your antenna is decent, there’s no reason that your signal can’t be 579 or better on their end.

The exchange is super easy – RST and your CQ Zone.  For those of us on the East Coast, I believe that is 5.  Most Amateur Radio maps and/or logging programs will provide that for you.  I’ll provide one here:

Don’t get hung up on not being able to work someone.  If you’re trying to work a loud station, and he can’t hear you, don’t be afraid to turn the dial and move on. Maybe props aren’t the best between you and him at that moment.  Go work someone else and come back to him in a bit if you can.  With enough experience, in no time you’ll be able to tell who you have a reasonable shot at working and who you don’t.

The most important thing is to have fun!  Don’t get discouraged or frustrated.  If you end up working 100 DX entities, that’s great!  If you only end up working 5 – so what? The bottom line is to enjoy yourself.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].