SOTA: Signal Mountain, April 14
Ian, N0IMB, and I will attempt to activate Signal Mountain, Virginia as a Signal Mountain is less than an hour’s drive from my house, and with a name like Signal Mountain, it seems the natural choice. Strangely, for being so close to a metropolitan center, according to the SOTA database, this ”peak” has never been activated.
Signal Mountain, SOTA designator W4/SH-049, is a 416 m tall peak located at Long -77.7033 by Lat 38.8816 degrees. Conveniently, judging by a google map view of the site, a road runs up to the top, although by SOTA rules, we’ll park some ways down the road and lug the equipment to the top. We don’t have mules, but we do have a hand-truck and/or a furniture dolly, so we plan not to break our backs carting the equipment up the hill. While this may not sound very adventurous for more experienced SOTA enthusiasts, this is our first activation, so we are trying to keep it simple. One side benefit is that we’ll have a stronger signal: one item we are lugging will be a gas-powered generator, and we will be transmitting at 100W. [edited: Correction - it was pointed out by a more experienced SOTA-er that this would violate SOTA guidelines - no fossil fuel generators. Well, that's fine with us, too. We'll use storage cells, perhaps supplemented with a bit of solar if we can put our hands on the right equipment quickly enough. This means we will not be transmitting at 100W, or at least not for long stretches. Most of my gear is QRP already, so this isn't a big adjustment. We'll just talk louder 
Operating Plan:
We will be operating under the call sign N0IMB from 16:00Z to 22:00Z on 14 April 2012. In local time, that is noon to 6 pm. Local sunset is 7:45 pm, so we should would like to pack up while we can see what we are doing.
We will operate voice from the top of each hour to forty-five minutes past, and then switch to CW for the last fifteen minutes. Typically, we will exchange a signal report, the name of the operator, and the SOTA designator.
Generally, we’ll stick to the following center frequencies. If these frequencies are busy, look for us up or down a bit:
Page 1 of 2 | Next page