Category: SOTA

My family and spent the holidays in the Czech Republic this year. We enjoyed a few days in Prague, had a nice visit to Cesky Kromlov, and spent New Year’s in the Lipno ski area.

What better way to start the New Year than to activate a SOTA peak? OK/JC-038 (Okolí) was not too far away, and on Google Maps, it looks like roads approach reasonably near the peak. Going northwards from Lipno, we followed route 163 and then 162, but at one point a smaller, unnamed road branches off 162. I went right by it and had to turn around, because this road is unpaved and enters the woods. It was covered in light snow, the rental car was doing well with traction, and other tire marks made it obvious where the road was, so I drove in.

Continue reading “SOTA OK/JC-038 (Okolí)”

After winding up some narrow country lanes, this summit is behind a metal metal gate tied shut with rope. A rutted (and at the time muddy) dirt road leads back from the gate towards a cluster of commercial antennas that are on a bit of land only marginally higher than the flat plateau around it. I did walk to that site, but decided that I would do better to work from just across the road where I had parked.

I did not have a lot of time on the way back from Exeter towards London, so I thought I would try my luck on VHF before throwing the HF antenna up over a tree branch. I scrambled up a low wall, held the radio up, and made calls on 2m FM. I got two quick responses from stations about 25 km away and they also worked me on SSB. I continued calling on 2m until I landed my four stations required to make this an official activation. Towards the end, my arm was getting tired, so I rested the bottom of FT817 on my head to the amusement of passing drivers.

I swapped in the FT817’s 6m vertical antenna and tried calling for about 10 minutes, both voice and CW (try working CW with paddles magnetically mounted on the radio which is on top of your head — it is a challenge). No 6m contacts have been logged from the peak, so I was hopeful, but it wasn’t to be.

To be honest, we had hoped to visit the Dr. Who Experience while in Cardiff, but the only way I could make the travel schedule work put us there on a Tuesday, the one day of the week when the exhibition is closed. We had some time on our hands later that day because the next stop in Bristol was not that far away, so after steeping ourselves in a bit more Cardiff culture, we headed for the hills.

Garth Hill is the high point near Cardiff, and is accepted to be the subject of the movie “The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain“. Colm Meaney was in the movie, so even though we missed a Dr. Who connection, we managed to have a Star Trek connection. [Okay, for purposes of full geek disclosure, in fact, the movie does have a Doctor Who connection in the sense that it starred Hugh Grant, who played Dr. Who (briefly) in a parody sketch, the Curse of Fatal Death].

Continue reading “SOTA: Garth Hill GW/SW-034”

Last month, I spent about two weeks in the UK with my daughter Lara looking at universities. We put about 1800 miles on the rental car and visited schools in England, Scotland, and Wales. Originally, Scotland wasn’t on the itinerary due to time constraints, but we ended up not only visiting the University of Edinburgh, but activating a summit just north of Edinburgh in North Berwick.

Easter weekend was right in the middle of the trip, and I had picked that downtime to visit the Isle of Man. By that part of the itinerary, we had already gone north to U. Nottingham and then west to Bangor. Along the way, we routed through Macclesfield to visit SOTAbeams and picked up a ten meter fiberglass travel mast and some other kit.

From Bangor, it wasn’t too far to Liverpool to catch the ferry over the Isle of Man. Unfortunately, the ferry hit the pier in Douglas the night before our departure. When we got to the ferry terminal on Friday morning we were told that the ferry was temporarily out of commission. I spent the next half hour tapping away at my phone in the ferry terminal car park, calculating what other interest places we could reach and then booking a hotel in North Berwick. In the back of mind, I was hoping to get on the air as MM/AI4SV, but I didn’t have any SOTA peaks in mind.

Continue reading “SOTA: GM/SS-280, North Berwick Law”

You would think that with a name like “Mingus”, it wouldn’t really be necessary to specify the SOTA designator — but you would be wrong, as there is also a Mount Mingus (W4T/SU-008) in the database. I’d assert that my Mingus is the One True Mingus. I don’t know if there is any technical difference whether something is named Mountain versus Mount, but I would like to think there is, and that the one I climbed was the real deal: my first ten-point summit. We just don’t have mountains like this in the Mid-Atlantic region.

I had initially missed Mount Mingus because of a peculiarity of the Arizona association’s database. Initially, the state was divided into two regions, east and west. Mingus is in the west part. Later, they when more states were added, additional regions with tighter geographic scope were created like North and South Maricopa around Phoenix. I had wondered why some mountains appeared to be missing in the regional databases. Now I know.

Continue reading “SOTA W7A/WA-010: Mingus Mountain”

Getting to the top of Mount Suappoa wasn’t too bad, since it’s mostly a matter of following a paved road. For the same two activator points, Goat Hill was much more of a climb. As mentioned, both peaks are in South Mountain Park to the South of Phoenix. In fact, in the picture at right, you can see antennas on Suappoa.

The aptly named Summit Road winds through the park and cuts across Ranger Trail which leads up to Goat Hill. It looks like Ranger Trail is used by both hikers and those on horses, and that some begin lower down on the trail.

Continue reading “SOTA: W7A/MS-065 Goat Hill”

Since I was only in Arizona for a short time on this trip, I didn’t attempt to acclimate to the local time zone, I just let me biological clock freewheel. The night before this outing, I had gone to bed at 6:30 in the evening, which seemed just fine to me. The flip side of this was then waking up around 3 am. Instead of forcing myself back to sleep, I just started my day. I got some work email out of the way and then began looking through peak information. I found two peaks that had been previously activated, seemed like reasonable climbs, and which were near each other, both in South Mountain Park.

Continue reading “SOTA W7A/MS-048 Mount Suappoa”

I have a few more SOTA adventures to report, the most recent from a brief trip to Arizona. During that trip I visited three peaks, but I wanted first to write about Lookout Mountain, W7A/MS-050. I had reviewed summits on the SOTA database before the trip and thought that this peak was a good candidate, particularly since it has never been activated.

When I flew into Phoneix it was early in the day — too early to check in, so I pointed the rental car towards the mountain. I took 16th Street south of East Greenway up to a parking lot at the base of the mountain; this is the start of Trailhead #308. There is a sign there with some topographic maps and information about environmental hazards.

Continue reading “SOTA W7A/MS-050: The road not taken”

After a week of meetings in Washington, I arrived in San Francisco for a meeting on gastrointestinal cancer that is held every year about this time.  In the previous week, I had thought about where I might operate if weather were good and decided on Mount Davidson, the highest elevation within the City of San Francisco, and a SOTA peak (W6/NC-423). I got into town the day before meetings and the forecast was good, so took a bus to the park entrance. For reference, the bus stop is at the intersections of Dalewood Way and Lansdale Avenue. I have to admit that the bus did a lot of the work, as the park entrance itself it at considerable elevation. From that entrance, there is a clear trail right up to the summit. The trail was in good shape, but a bit slippery since it had rained the day before.

There is a sign near the base of the trail that specifies that the very top of the mountain is not owned by the city, but owned privately (but nonetheless is accessible by the public). I worked from a park bench in that area, throwing my end-fedz antenna over a eucalyptus tree just to the west of the bench.

I went in the afternoon, which I thought would give me the best chance of reaching the US East Coast on 20m and perhaps working regionally on 40m. It was a week day and propagation was a little down, and I ended up with about fifteen contacts, which ranged from K6EL’s booming signal from a neighboring hill out to New York. Again, contacts spread evenly between 40m and 20m, with only K6EL hearing my call on 10m. I had meant to try 2m, but left the antenna in the hotel room.

I came down the mountain when it got dark, and while it was a fun adventure to take the bus to the mountain, I dialed up an Uber car when I got to the trail head and was back in the city 20 minutes later. The QSOs have been logged into the SOTA database, but upload to LOTW will again have to await my return to Antananarivo next week.

Here’s a picture from the peak facing North. I like this picture, because I can see my operating positions from previous visits to San Francisco: Buena Vista Park and Twin Peaks.