* Reference Links Page * SOTA Specific Links
* My Equipment Loadout * DMR Tips * My Youtube Channel
I monitor 146.520 and DMR SOTA (973), track me on the trail HERE. Donate HERE, Mastodon
Amateur Radio / HAM BLOG for N1CLC
I'm looking forward to presenting to the Palomar Amateur Radio Club on August 2nd.
If you'd like to look at the presentation directly, go HERE.
If interested, you can open the presentation HERE.
Much of this SOTA hobby is mostly about activity, taking an amateur radio, that maybe you built, to the top of a mountain, and get at-least four direct contacts (without aid of a repeater) and you get some “points”. The higher the summit, the more points it’s worth. The “points” are part of the made up / gamified part of this hobby, but I do enjoy tracking some other things that are more substantial.
I track how many summits I’ve humped my 25 - 30 lb pack up to. Sure, some are drive-ups, but most aren’t. Some are very hard, some are a simple walk up hill. I also keep track of the number of miles that I hiked (zero if it’s a drive-up), mountain biked, and free solo’d (zero). I also track the amount of elevation gained for each hike. For fun I’ve also been tracking how many “uniques” (first time I have ever done that summit), and “first activations” (first time anyone in SOTA hobby has done that summit). Note, if I do a summit more than once in a year, it doesn’t count for points. I do a local summit near my house all the time to test my radio, new antennas, hiking gear etc. I also do summits more than once if someone is visiting and they want a hiking buddy, or, just for fun. (Click on pictures for larger)
I also did a more detailed writeup at HamNinja.com/logging if you are interested.
We covered what SOTA is, how to do SOTA, my "loadout" and more.
UPDATE: On 10/20/2022 I tried to use Winlink over VARA HF on my 891. I could not get rig control to work, even though I implemented the same config. However, I plugged into the IC-7300 and had it working in minutes. Arrrrg. All that work on the 891 and now it will be a long debug session. Although I started with the FT-991, I've documented the 7300 config below (easy)
I wanted to run a Winlink Express app (email
application) and use HF radio to send and receive email messages. The Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES)
team that I’m on uses Winlink along with its built in standard FEMA forms. It helps ARES accomplish their mission to
support local hospitals, clinics and associated agencies during an
emergency. Using HF setup for sending
email during an emergency is appropriate if the affected area is large (no
internet for 100 miles). This is because
you can move messages into and out of the affected area using relay stations
that have internet service that are 100s or over 1,000 miles away. For instance, if there was an earthquake in
my area, I’m better off trying to get a message to a hub station that is
outside of the affected area which could be all of Southern California. Because of it’s range, HF is perfect for this
scenario. Station to station
transmission could be achieved using the lower HF bands as well, or using VHF
modes like VARA FM or packet. I’ve been
successful using packet radio from my 5w FT-817 but packet stations are slowly
disappearing.
(click on images for larger)