There are over 50 summits in Colorado with an elevation of 14,000 feet or higher. These are commonly called fourteeners (or 14ers) and get a lot of attention from outdoor enthusiasts. Some folks have climbed all of them, which quickly leads to the question of What Is A Fourteener? This question is really about what is a distinct fourteener versus when is a summit just a subpeak of another fourteener. The Colorado Mountain Club list of 14ers shows 54 peaks, while other lists include a few more summits. Doing a search on Lists Of John reveals there are 74 locations in the state that exceed 14,000 feet. What constitutes “the correct list of 14ers” is often debated in the climbing community but I won’t try to sort that out here. I’ll use the Colorado Mountain Club list of 54 summits for this posting.

Summits On The Air (SOTA)

Obviously, if these are the 54 highest summits in Colorado, they are all going to be SOTA summits, right? Not so fast, Sir Edmund. The SOTA program generally requires summits to have 150 meters (492 feet) of prominence, a measure of the elevation of a summit relative to the surrounding terrain. From peaklist.org:

Prominence is the elevation of a summit relative to the highest point to which one must descend before reascending to a higher summit. 

There are exceptions in the SOTA program that allow for summits of 100-meter prominence, but this does not apply to Colorado. Paul/VK5PAS has a webpage that explains prominence as applied to SOTA.

In recent history, the folks that set up the SOTA Associations have done a great job of sorting through what is a valid summit. In the US, there are excellent databases of geographic information that make this possible. Which is to say that in a particular SOTA Association, a consistent method is applied for determining “what is a summit”? This is all documented for Colorado in the W0C SOTA ARM here: https://sotastore.blob.core.windows.net/arms/ARM-W0C-3_3.pdf

Lincoln, Bross, Democrat, and Cameron

Now, back to the Colorado 14ers. There is a popular trek that allows a climber to summit four 14ers in one day, without extreme effort. The trail starts at Kite Lake, heads up to Mount Democrat (14155 ft), then over to Mount Cameron (14222 feet), and on to Mount Lincoln (14293 feet). The return trip passes over Mount Bross (14178 feet) and back down to Kite Lake. (There have been access issues in recent years concerning private property on this loop, so be sure to check that out and respect any closures).

If we check out the official list of SOTA summits, we will find Mount Democrat (W0C/SR-059) and Mount Lincoln (W0C/FR-001) listed but not Mount Cameron and Mount Bross. Per Lists of John, Cameron and Bross have prominences of 152 and 315 feet. The col between Lincoln and Cameron, does not drop down enough to provide Cameron with sufficient prominence. Same with the col between Cameron and Bross. Mount Lincoln has the highest elevation of those three summits and wins the honor of being listed as a SOTA summit. Note that Democrat, with the lowest elevation of the four summits, does qualify for the SOTA list due to its 770 feet of prominence. (There is a big enough dip between Democrat and Cameron.)

Now back to the list of 54 Colorado Fourteeners: Mount Cameron is not on the list but it often shows up on other 14er lists. Mount Bross is shown on the list of 54 but is not a SOTA summit. There are seven other Colorado 14ers that don’t qualify for SOTA: Crestone Needle, El Diente Peak, Tabeguache Peak, Sunlight Peak, Ellingwood Point, Little Bear Peak, and North Maroon Peak.

You don’t need to become an expert on calculating prominence to do SOTA activations. Really, the key thing is to check the SOTA list and make sure your intended summit is on the list before you hit the trail.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Why is a 14,000 Foot Summit Not Valid for SOTA? appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Hello and welcome to Episode #480 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics episode, the hosts discuss the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo, smuggling handy talkies into New Zealand, Route 66 on the Air, some ins and outs of sudo, Organic Maps and much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

 This past weekend I was rolling along in the CWop open CW contest when all of a sudden when I sent CW my Icom 7610 shut down and then cycled back on all on its own. My output power was 100 watts and each time I transmitted the rig would cycle off and back on again. I had already been contesting for about 3 hours and all was good and now this!

With the contest completed and still hearing CW rings in my ear, it was now time to turn my attention back to the 7610 power cycling issue. I subscribe to Groups.io which is an email group and one of my email groups is called Icom 7610 you guessed it, it's all about the Icom 7610. I read the threads regarding power cycling and the Anderson power pole. The consensus seemed to be the connection point of these connectors can develop a poor connection. The fix some used was like I did to connect and reconnect a few times. While others removed that style of connector altogether. 

On the Icom touch screen, you can bring up a menu called meters. One of the meters is the Vd. This meter reads the real-time internal voltage of the 7610. On the scale, there is a red section and if the voltage gets to this point the radio will shut down. Once the sufficient voltage is supplied again the radio will cycle on again. Thus the issue I was having. When I was transmitting I was drawing much more current then bring in a poor connection (resistance) thus drawing more current. When you draw more current your voltage goes down and if it goes below what the Icom 7610 wants the radio shuts down. As soon as it shuts down more than enough voltage is available as very little current is being used and the radio cycles back on again. 

On the Anderson power pole site, they do have a bulletin as to why a connection issue may exist. Some causes they mentioned were a poor crimp connection if you decided to solder the connection a poor solder job and if the solder flowed down onto the connection tabs this could be an issue as well. I have to be honest I have been using Anderson power poles for a long time and I have never had an issue. 

I wanted to see if the Anderson power poles have in my case become an issue. My test was set up as follows. I wanted to have a steady constant load on the Icom 7610 and what better way than to transmit an FT8 tune signal, I choose to use 100 watts. I would connect the radio as it was during the contest and then send an FT8 carrier at 100 watts. Record the voltage drop on the Icom Vd meter. Then remove the Anderson power poles from the Rig runner. One is the power cord from the radio, the other from the power supply to the Rig runner. Run the same test and record the results. finally, remove the Anderson power poles from the cable from the Icom and connect it directly to the Astron SS-30-M power supply which has screw terminals. Then record the results. 

Before I began I checked the terminal voltage on the Astron power supply and it was 13.8 volts DC. Also during the tests, the power supply voltage stayed at 13.8 volts DC. Below are the results from the tests. 

Just a word about the Vd meter before we begin. I determined that the Vd meter scale is 0.24 volts per hatch mark. Therefore the minimum voltage red trip line on the Vd meter scale is the 6th hatch mark from left to right (11.44 volts) with the first hatch mark counted as zero. 

The first test was with the radio connected to the Rig runner via the Aderson power pole and the power supply connected to the Rig runner via the Anderson power pole. The results below when FT8 test tune at 100 watts was Vd voltage dropped to two hatch marks above the trip red line. 

For the second test, I removed the Rig runner and connected the two Anderson power poles one to the other. The FT8 100-watt test tune gave the same results,  two hatch marks from the trip red line. 

Finally, I removed the Anderson power pole from the radio power cord and stripped the ends and attached it directly to the Astron power supply via its screw connectors. The FT8 100 watts test resulted in a surprising result of 5 hatch marks above the red trip line. 

It was an honor to be asked by Nathaniel N2AF to kick-off this year’s series of online talks last week. We are kicking-off another football season so I actually got to play in this one! There were 60 or more in online attendance and several who sent in notes that they couldn’t make it but wanted the link to the video. And…great, great questions from the audience!

Here’s the announcement from over at the HamSCI.org website. The link to the Youtube video is at the bottom of this post. Comments and thoughts are welcomed! I’m good on QRZed.

Seminar: Revolutionary Alternatives in Sunspot Prediction

Thursday, August 18, 2022 – 23:45

Thursday, August 18, 2022 – 23:43

Submitted 2 weeks 3 days ago by w2naf.

Dr. Frank Howell K4FMH will present a seminar based on his two-part article in the July & August 2022 issues of the Radio Society of Great Britain’s RadCom journal, written with Dr. Scott McIntosh of NCAR in Colorado, titled, “On the Cusp of a Scientific Revolution?” The seminar includes the latest theory construction and model estimation. The seminar will be held on September 1, 2022 at 4 PM Eastern (2000z) during the weekly Solar Eclipse QSO Party Zoom Telecon. Frank is Professor Emeritus at Mississippi State University, Affiliated Faculty at Emory University, and a scientific member of HamSCI.

Abstract: Sunspots are the Dow Jones Industrial Index for hams. We are faithful to the sine wave model of the approximate 11-year cycle with the official NASA/NOAA predictions being our Holy Grail. I’ll address the following issues. How did we get to this sine wave conception? How do scientific paradigms compete and change? A new competing paradigm by the McIntosh team has been proposed. What’s new? What’s both the theoretical and empirical basis for this Kuhnian revolution in predictions? For Cycle 25, I’ll compare the official NASA/NOAA versus McIntosh team projections of SSNs and how they are constructed. I’ll also show how they compare to observed sunspots in the Cycle. Can we now better predict the underlying phenomena driving the amplitude and transition of a cycle? This model competition may well parallel the Newton-Einstein paradigm clash a century ago where science hung in the balance while solar eclipse photo plates were taken in Brazil and the Island of Principe. Now, we can follow along and see: will there be a scientific revolution in sunspot prediction?

Link to the Youtube video:

Rito Alto Peak is an easy 13er about 15 miles west of Westcliffe, CO in the Sangre De Cristo mountain range. This summit caught my attention because it was near Hermit Pass, one of the highest passes in Colorado at 13047 feet. We’ve been taking the Jeep up the highest roads in Colorado, and Hermit Pass was on The List. Looking around on the map, I noticed that Rito Alto Peak was an unactivated 10-point SOTA summit right next to the pass. Not only that, the summit is in the San Juan National Forest (K-4404), enabling a POTA activation as well. So how could we not do a trip up there?

Rito Alto Peak (W0C/SC-004) and Hermit Pass are about 15 miles straight west of Westcliffe, CO. To get there, take CR 160 (Hermit Road) west and then turn south onto FS 160. The turn-off is easy to spot and begins the 4WD portion of the trip. The 4WD road is not particularly difficult from a technical point of view, but the road is very rocky for most of the 9 miles. Every once in a while, the road has a smoother section, only to be followed by lots of rocks. I call these roads “moderate but annoying.” Any real 4WD vehicle should be able to handle this. We drove our stock Jeep Wrangler and it did fine. This is not a road for Suburu-class SUVs.

At the end of the 9 miles of bouncing up the road, we parked at Hermit Pass and started the climb there. (It took us about 2 hours to drive this road.) Of course, you can always hike some or all of the road. Useful climbing info can be found here on 14ers.com. Hermit Peak, to the south of the pass, is NOT a SOTA summit. However, further south is Eureka Mountain (W0C/SC-007), which could also be hiked from Hermit Pass.

The figure above shows the track of our climbing route. There is no trail and there is plenty of talus to step over and around. The route is not critical but we tended to stay on top of the ridge line, sometimes deviating to find a better path. The distance was 0.7 miles one way with an elevation gain of 700 feet. So not too difficult, except for climbing over rocks. Trekking poles are highly recommended.

On the summit, we set up our normal 2m FM station: the Yaesu FT-90 transceiver with 3-element 2m Yagi antenna, and started calling on 146.52 MHz. Joyce made the first contact so she has the honor of doing the first SOTA activation from this summit. You Go Girl!

I was a bit worried about getting enough contacts to qualify for SOTA points but that turned out to not be a problem. We heard strong signals from the Buena Vista area (W0BV, KD0MRC) and Florrisant (K0MGL). We also made some Summit-to-Summit QSOs (S2S): WV0X (St Charles Peak, W0C/SC-031), W0ADV (Snowmass Mountain, W0C/WE-003), and W0CP (McQuaid Butte, W0C/SP-109). We also worked K0EEP, K9RZK, W9RIK, and W9NDR. Our Best DX for the day was 104 miles, with W0ADV on Snowmass. Thanks for all of the 2m FM QSOs!

As shown in the photos, the weather was excellent. We took our time on the mountain and never saw signs of thunderstorms. The climb down was easy and we returned to the Jeep. Then it was 9 more miles bouncing down the road and on to Westcliffe for a late lunch. What a great day for SOTA + POTA + Jeep trip.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Rito Alto Peak SOTA W0C/SC-004 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

For those of you who are into CW and the key has gathered some dust over the summer break a great way to slide back into the CW groove is to take part in some 1 hour "mini-contests" 

The K1USN SST (Slow Speed Test)

The event runs twice a week    Friday 2000-2100 UTC
                                                  Monday 0000-0100 UTC which is Sunday eve but Monday according to UTC time....always threw me off when I first got into contesting.....anyways...

This 1-hour mini contest max's out at 20 wpm and I have done many of these and sent at 16-18 WPM and had many contacts. If you are rusty and want to pick up the dit dah pace a bit this contest is a great place to be. If you are a veteran op it's a great place to slow the pace down and donate an hour.
The exchange is your call sign, name and your State or Province. The contest program N1MM+ supports this contest also if the call sign you are working on is in N1MM+ database the op's name and State/Provence is auto filled if you want. This way you can start by just having to copy the op's call sign. 

ICWC MST (Medium Speed Contest)

                         Mondays 1300-1400 and 1900-2000 

Tuesdays 0300-0400

In this 1 hour mini contest the CW speed picks up the pace a bit to 20-25 WPM BUT on request will slow down. This contest is also supported by N1MM+ but under the UDC section (user-defined contest) I'm not going into the UDC format here but use the ICWC link above and they provide a link to the N1MM site to set this contest up. The exchange in this one is your call sign, name and QSO number (serial number as it's called)

 CWops CWT

This event runs 4 times a week. Wednesdays 1300-1400 UTC and 1900-2000 UTC
                                                   Thursdays 0300-0400 UTC and 0700-0800 UTC
 

In this 1-hour mini contest, one has to put their seat belt on and realize your hair (if you still have any) will be blowing in the wind with the CW speeds. This contest is looked at as a high-speed mini-contest. The speed starts at 25 wpm and goes up from there. When I say up.... speeds into the 40's wpm....mind-boggling. Anyway, N1MM+ does support this contest. In my humble opinion if you are in the 20ish wpm range give this contest a listen only. Search and pounce just listening to the calls and see what you can pick out. The average speed is mid 20's to mid 30's wpm. The exchange your call, name and CWops member number or if not a member your State or Province.
I do take part in this contest but I am not as yet a member of the CWops so my exchange is NB for New Brunswick. Membership details can be found at the site from the link above. 

So there you have it if you are interested this fall and winter and have some time on your hands give the 1-hour mini tests a go. Here is the way I look at it....I busted my hump learning CW (it was not an option when I went for my ticket) and I just did not want to throw that away. I had done what most did to get my ticket I learned the code just to get past the exam and I planned to forget about it.
I did leave the code and radio alone as I had a young family like most of you did. I then started to have time on my hands and the love for radio was alive again. I listened to CW and to be honest I was a few code letters short of a full load if you know what I mean. Slowly started to pick it up again and have never looked back.
-------------------
                  ------------------
                                    ---------------------
                                                       --------------------
Above is me stepping down off my soapbox....I hope you found some useful information from the above.