Sunday, January 24, 2021

2020-12-26 Gordon Point

Today’s expedition was with N7DA, Drew.  We had originally planned to MTB up to Grodon Point, next to Palomar State Park, but we decided to hike it at the last minute.  It actually would have been a perfect MTB since most of it was road.  There were two gates that we needed to get through but we should have been able to feed the bikes through. 

It was perfect weather for the hike.  Once on top, we scouted around for a way to make it to the very top.  It would have been a pretty tight bushwhack with very little reward.  Given that we were only about 50 feet from the top, we were still in the activation zone.  We both fired up our HF radios and easily landed some contacts.  I made a few FM contacts and we headed back.  On the way down, we did see a few hikers.  Given our early arrival, we had had the mountain to ourselves. 

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Qualcomm Amateur Radio Club Presentation

I'm pleased to present to the Qualcomm Amateur Radio Club Summits On the Air.

You can access the slides ---> HERE <---.

Monday, January 11, 2021

Saturday, January 2, 2021

2020 SOTA Year in Review

Wow!  2020 has been one hell of a year for me and Summit On the Air (SOTA).  As you can see in the table below, 2019 was busy, but 2020 achievements were insane, given that I racked up 104 summits for 543 points (and I’m not retired).  That's a 68% increase in summits and 48% more points.  Also, there was 66% more climbing year over year, for a total of 83,390 feet climbed while doing SOTA.  Also, as you can see in the table below, I focused more on summit-to-summit (S2S) contacts points.  This year I had a 258% more S2S than 2019.  For 2020, I ranked #3 in California for both S2S points and total points for the year.  I was within 4 points of placing second but just didn’t feel like hitting the road for hours to reach enough points.  Yup, caught a case of the lazys.  
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