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Back in the summer of 2013, I did the first Summits On The Air (SOTA) activation for W0C/SP-094. This is an unnamed summit (10350) near Trout Creek Pass not far from our cabin. Although I did activate it, I only made two radio contacts from the summit (so no activator points awarded). A thunderstorm had moved in and I decided to abandon the effort. Actually, I don’t recall much from that activation other than getting skunked due to weather.

So today, Joyce/K0JJW and I returned to the summit to set things right. Following Walt/W0CP’s suggestion, we drove the Jeep from the south (Hwy 24) taking FR 305 to FR 376 and parked just off the road at 38.86967, -106.03146. FR 305 is a good 2WD gravel road; FR376 is easy 4WD (or high clearance 2WD). A winter storm warning was in effect the night before we hiked, so I wondered if the weather was going to win again. As it turns out, we had 3 or 4 inches of new snow on the ground which was not a problem.

From the parking spot, the hiking route is not critical. Just head for the summit. We decided to swing slightly to the east which gave us a little less slope. It also provided us a nice walk across the top of the ridge that extends out to the southeast. As you can see from the photo, the summit is flat with a reasonable number of trees. Round trip distance is 1.5 miles with 700 feet of vertical. Easy peasy.

Once on top, we called on 146.52 MHz and worked Bob/W0BV, Skip/W9GYA, Jim/KD0MRC, Walt/WZ0N, Dave/N0KM and Ken/WA6TTY. We also made a couple of 446.0 MHz contacts with some of the same stations.

Earlier, as we left for the trailhead, I got an email from Steve/WG0AT that he was headed up Mt Herman (W0C/FR-063). This sounded like a great summit-to-summit opportunity! I figured we’d need our best 2m fm station, so I got out the Yaesu FT-90 and the Arrow 3-element yagi. I saw him spotted on SOTAwatch so I called him multiple times on 2m fm. Finally, I heard someone else talking to him on 146.52 which caused me to swing the antenna back and forth. Sure enough, I could hear him…barely…with the antenna pointed way south of his location. This often happens in the mountains…the direct path is not always the best path on VHF. I just barely worked Steve and got him in the log.

We stayed on the summit for a while, enjoying the view of Mt Princeton, then hiked down. It was a wonderful activation…much better than the first time.

73, Bob K0NR

The post Return to SOTA Summit W0C/SP-094 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

You don’t have to look very hard to find a few threads telling you which piece of radio kit you ‘need’ to take on a SOTA activation. There are fewer that give you a bit of advice about planning your trip. This is one of those, a short look at the tools I use to take to the fells (for the uninitiated a fell is a hill in Cumbria or the Lake District).

The lakes are a great place to SOTA, there are 55 summits to choose from and nearly all of them have well understood routes to the summit. Alfred Wainwrights 7 volume ‘Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells‘ gives you a great reference point for the SOTA’s as well as all the fells (214 in total). But they aren’t ‘proper maps’ they are guides. They do however have a few benefits they describe the routes brilliantly. So what else can you use.

In my mind there is only one map. The ordinance survey map used almost exclusively by everyone. There are a few exceptions to the rule as always but this is all about me right! These are great tools, but dsometimes you don’t need a full map. So another tool that uses just parts of these maps is an online tool called bikehike. It is an amalgamation of several map types one of which is Google maps and another is the OS map. Below is an example of a route I did the other day that took in Dub’s Hut bothy and High Stile.

Pretty handy really. Its a click and click again type mapping tool that gives you elevation data and distance. What it doesn’t tell you is how long it’s going to take. Bring in Naismiths rule. The rule that states ‘Allow one hour for every 3 miles (5 km) forward, plus an additional hour for every 2,000 feet (600 m) of ascent’. This is good to know. So for example this route had around 2850ft of climbing so fire up the calculator (or use an online tool such as Trails NH) and that tells me that it should take around 4hrs 45mins. So in this case how long did it really take? well it wasn’t too far off the mark. The last bit from High Stile to Gatesgarth was a bit of a slow slog because of the state of the path. This brings me onto the last point – Not all path are paths!

Just because its on the map doesn’t mean its on the fell. Even if it is there are endless sheep tracks to confuse you and tiring boulder fields that intersect the paths. If you’re not too fit then stick to the Wainwright guides otherwise feel free to follow the other routes some are very direct and very strenuous as well as good fun but know what you’re getting yourself into.

When I said last point I really meant it. But I can’t talk about getting outdoors without mentioning the GPS, I will breifly. Love them or hate them I always go out with one….my phone (complete with Back Country Navigator). Mainly because it has OS maps but also because it ‘does’ APRS via APRSDroid. A very handy spotting tool. Having said that the Mk 1 eyeball beats them all. If it doesn’t look sensible it probably isn’t.

Enjoy the fells and don’t forget to plan

In February 2018’s QST was a very interesting and scholarly article, the cover story actually, on the effects of live trees on the performance of both vertical and horizontal antennas.  Things to ponder:

1. Living wood (trees, as opposed to dry dead wood such as boards) absorbs EMF from vertically polarized antennas.
2. Living wood resembles human tissue in terms of dielectric properties, so wearing your HT on your belt will greatly reduce your effective antenna power.  Presumably, unless you’re a real fathead like me, talking into HT held at your face should not be too bad.
3. A single vertical tree has next to no effect on horizontal antennas, such as dipoles.
4. A forest, containing lots of vertical trees, is even worse than a single tree like in your backyard, so for us backpackers and hikers, we need to find a clearing when trying to use our HT’s in the woods.
5. Worse, a forest will affect both vertical and horizontal antennas so when we’re operating in the field, for POTA or SOTA for example, we should look for a Goldilocks spot with enough trees to launch the, say, dipole, but not too many.  Better in Winter after leaves fall, though.

This is Wayne,  k4wk, http://www.hamdom.com.  Thanks for listening; you’re in the log.

Operating from countries outside the US can be a lot of fun. I just completed another another Slacker DXpedition, this time to the Cayman Islands. The formula for this type of operation is simple: identify an interesting vacation spot that is also considered DX, travel there with friends & family, take along some compact radio gear and get on the air. A key point is to not overdo the radio operating or the friends & family will veto any radio activity on future trips.

Licensing for the Cayman Islands is relatively easy if you hold a US FCC amateur radio license. Complete info can be found on the Ofreq web site. Licensing for the Caymans is typical of many Caribbean countries: fill out the application form, send it to Ofreq by email along with a copy of your US license, passport and $25US. Visitor call signs have the prefix ZF2 and you can request your favorite two-letter suffix. That’s how I got ZF2NR.

I was issued a Class A license which has all operating privileges. My spouse Joyce/K0JJW holds a US General Class license and was issued a Cayman Class B license, which has limited HF privileges (no phone on 40m, 20m, or 17m). So keep that in mind if you have a General Class license.

Grand Cayman is in grid EK-99 and is IOTA NA-016.

My equipment strategy was the same as my V29RW operation on Antigua (see V29RW: Slacker DXpedition to Antigua).  The basic kit is a Yaesu FT-991 driving a  end-fed halfwave (EFHW) wire antenna for the band of interest. Never underestimate the power of getting a halfwave antenna up into the air. The FT-991 fits in my carry-on bag and it covers all bands from HF through 70cm.

There is a 2m repeater (146.76 MHz) on Grand Cayman that works quite well. We received a friendly welcome on the repeater from Phil ZF1PB and several other Cayman hams.

Vacation Home

Our group rented a nice vacation home near Rum Point on the north side of Grand Cayman. This place is right on the water with an excellent sand beach. Denny KB9PDF/ZF2PF and I put up the EFHW 20m antenna supported by my SOTAbeams pole strapped to a palm tree. This setup worked quite well and we soon had a nice pileup of stations calling us on 20m. We did have some issues with local noise sources, the worst of which was traced to some dimmer switches in the house. This is one of the problems with a portable setup like this…you never know what RFI problems you’ll encounter. Later in the week, we put up a 40m EFHW and made a few contacts on that band, too.

ZF1A

Bruce/K0BJ suggested that I check into using the Cayman Amateur Radio Society club station (ZF1A) which they make available to visiting hams. I connected with Eden/ZF1EJ who confirmed that the station was available later in the week. Again, I did not want to overdo the radio thing, so we settled on operating at ZF1A during the middle of the day on Wednesday.

This turned out to be a great move. ZF1A has multiple towers with some very capable antennas. Like I always say: Never underestimate the power of using a large directional antenna on top of a big tower.  Eden/ZF1EJ met us at the station (it is literally in his backyard) and helped us get situated. Our operating strategy was simple: use the highest HF phone band that had good propagation and work as many stations as possible. We were also prepared to use FT8 if things were really bad but that was not needed. It turned out that 15m was dead but 17m was open into North America and Europe, so we did most of our operating there.

Here’s a short video to give you a taste of the pileup.

I did work some of the folks back home, which was a treat: K0AV, W0CP, K0BJ, W0RLY, W0GAS, WG0AT, KD0RQU. I had noticed that Steve/WG0AT was doing a Summits On The Air (SOTA) activation on Crooked Top Mountain (W0C/SP-090) and I gave him a call. Being QRP, his signal was very weak at my location but he could hear me with no problem.

Here’s the QSO audio that Steve recorded on his end:

Satellites

We worked two OSCAR satellite passes (AO-91, AO-92) using a pair of handheld radios and an Arrow 2m/70cm yagi antenna. The pair of handhelds gave us full-duplex capability: I ran the 70cm uplink on my HT while Denny ran the downlink on 2m. No surprise to find the FM satellites quite busy and a bit frustrating to work. I logged these stations from ZF2NR: KI0G, K3SV, TI2CDA, TI4DJ, HP2VX.

Results

My ZF2NR log shows 376 HF QSOs, most of them made by me. Joyce K0JJW/ZF2JW braved the pileup to make a few contacts. Denny/KB9DPF had some additional contacts as ZF2PF.  QSL to our home callsigns.

I’ve loaded the ZF2NR log into Logbook of The World.

Band Mode QSOs
   7 LSB    5 
  14 USB   65
  18 USB  306
 Total    376

In retrospect, I realized that we had the antenna pointed north most of the time and we probably should have looked in other directions. In particular, we only worked a few South American stations.

Most important is that a good time was had by all. Thanks to everyone that worked us while we were in the Cayman Islands.

73, Bob K0NR/ZF2NR

The post ZF2NR: Another Slacker DXpedition appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

It is time for another W0C (Colorado) Summits On The Air dinner!

Last year, we had 15 people get together for an informal dinner in south Denver (Lone Tree): Steve WG0AT, Wayne AD0KE, Brad WA6MM, Caleb W4XEN, Carey KX0R, John N0TA, Curtis KC5CW, Mark N0MTN, Bob K0NR, Joyce K0JJW, Steve K7PX, Al  KH7AL, James KI0KN, Walt W0CP and John N1OIE. It was so much fun meeting people and swapping SOTA stories that we are going to do it again this year.

Wednesday March 21^th  at 6 pm
Chili’s, 10460 Park Meadows Dr, Lone Tree, CO 80124-5413

Dinner details:
   No agenda, no organization, just have fun, pay for your meal
Please wear something with your name/callsign (name tag, shirt, cap, etc.) to aid in making connections

Please send this to anyone you know that might be interested.
RSVP back to Bob K0NR: [email protected] so we have an accurate count for the reservation.

I hope to see you all there!

73, Bob K0NR

The post WØC Summits On The Air Dinner appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

The world is divided into two groups: Bag Guys and Not Bag Guys. (I am using “guy” as gender neutral.) I am a Bag Guy. I am always looking for just the right backpack, computer bag, luggage or duffel bag. For example, I’ve got this special bag, a backpack, that I use for hauling my portable VHF/UHF radio gear. You might call it a Go Bag but it really only has radio gear in it.

My gear for Summits On The Air (SOTA) has expanded a bit, so obviously it was time for a new bag. I decided to buy this backpack because it has solid construction and plenty of pockets. I don’t plan to actually use this as a backpack, it will be more of a “toss the gear into the back of the Jeep” bag…but having backpack straps on it will come in handy. This bag will carry spare cables, chargers, batteries, etc. that I want to keep with the radios but won’t take on the trail.

I chose the “Coyote” color for two reasons: 1) my kids keep making fun of me for always buying black bags and 2) it doesn’t show the dirt as much.  This bag came with a US flag attached to it, which was a nice bonus. I kind of like patches but I don’t actually attach them to my gear or clothing very often. My interest in any particular patch changes with time and location. And I don’t want to put on so many of them that I look like a Boy Scout with a sash full of merit badges.

Well, the military has solved this problem through the use of hook-and-loop attachments (“Velcro”) on tactical gear. Feel like a little flair? Slap on a patch. Get tired of it, just take it off. Brilliant. For a little background on proper flair, see this video clip from the movie Office Space.

I thought the US Flag was pretty cool, so I found a Colorado flag to add to the collection. Then I got to thinking about using patches to label the bag. I noticed the many vendors that make custom text patches (often referred to as “Name Tapes”). These work great for labeling bags, pouches, etc. I ordered mine from a third-party on Amazon: 3 Inches/Hook Fastener/ Personalized Custom Name Tape

Of course, another option is to put my name on the patch. By name, I really mean name and call sign. If there are a pile of radio bags, everyone will know which one is mine. This is where it can get tricky because my call sign has a zero in it and not all vendors know how to handle the slash-zero thing. I decided to give it a try by just inserted a slash-zero character into the entry field on the web page. As you can see in the photo, it worked out just fine.

Do a little websearching and you’ll find plenty of military/tactical gear that has hook-and-loop fasteners built into the design. But, you may already have your favorite backpack that doesn’t have this feature. No problem, go ahead and attach a strip or two of the fuzzy (loop) material to it and you can slap your favorite patch on it.

I can already see how this may will get out of hand. There are so many packs, pouches, bags, hats, jackets that could use some proper labeling, or maybe just a little flair.

73, Bob K0NR

The post Flair For Your Radio Bag appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.