Ian, N0IMB, and I will attempt to activate Signal Mountain, Virginia as a Summit On The Air (SOTA) on Saturday, April 14, 2012. 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 :-)] Rigs will be a Yaesu FT-817 and a TenTec 1320.
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:
Band | CW Freq | SSB Freq |
40 | 7.027 | 7.187 |
30 | 10.127 | cw only |
20 | 14.027 | 14.277 |
17 | 18.077 | 18.127 |
15 | 21.027 | 21.287 |
12 | 24.897 | 24.947 |
10 | 28.027 | 28.487 |
We picked these frequencies after looking over the operating plans for other events on the same day (such as the various state QSO parties, the QCWA QSO party, etc.) as well as international band allocations. We may try 40m early in the day before strong absorbtion sets in, but then we’ll move to the higher frequencies. We are likely to spend the lionshare of the activation on 17 and 20m. In the last couple hours, we may try 30m. We will not be operation above 50Mhz for this event. [Note: Another update – to accomodate the US band plan, we have tweaked the center frequencies from the original posting, the three affected voice frequencies are highlighted in red.]
If anyone hears use, we’d sure appreciate being spotted so other people can find us! I think we will have cellular connectivity from the site, so we will also post our band changes via twitter (@dhakajack, with the hash tag #signalmt). My twitter account feeds to this website (http://blog.templaro.com), so the tweets will be visible in the right column in the desktop view. We will not post via twitter or SMS to qrpspots since we will be working barefoot for most of the event.
Hi,
I’m an inexperienced operator but I will listen up on those frequencies and give it a shot.
I’ll be at the Long Island QRP Club “meeting” in Sunken Meadow State Park today.
Good luck.
Bob
N2DET
Great. I grew up in Westchester and have some inlaws out near the park. We’ve made many a trip up route 25A.
If I had a beam, I’d point it in your direction 🙂
Hope to hear you on the air later today!
72,
Jack
All the best Jack for this activation. I’ll listen for you on the higher frequencies. It’ll be a miracle but we might have a QSO. I imagine you’ll get plenty of Europeans at least on cw [at which I’m awful].
Batteries and solar power are your only sources of energy for the radio. Many of us use Li-Po batteries from model aircraft on SOTA trips. The bags are heavy enough already! You can walk, cycle, ski or ride your horse to the summit. Having goats carry your luggage appears to be allowed too ;¬D
73
David M0YDH
Wolverhampton
UK
Jack & Ian,
It was a pleasure having CW/SSB QSOs with both of you. Signal Mountain is summit #141 for me. I hope you guys had a lot of fun.
73
Gene KC3RT
Pittsburgh PA