The old Baofeng HT (UV5R) is the butt of many jokes these days in amateur radio. But right after their introduction, they were the “Xiegu HF rig” of the moment: they mostly worked, were cheaper than many similar products, and hams just had to explore them!

I bought a few, kept one, but gave them to new hams. Heck, I even purchased a case of Baofeng’s to supply the new amateur radio club in my home county of Washington County, GA. They would charge them up, program them for the new repeater, and gift them to newly licensed Techs in Sandersville and there abouts.

What happened to the one I kept? Well, if you have a minute, here it is.

The Jackson MS area had fallen by the wayside in terms of APRS digipeaters. But it really sucked by not having any iGates. A fellow ham who was head of Security at an area hospital installed an iGate serviced by backup power as part of their EmComm effort. That was fine…until the IT team monkeyed with “odd” IP connections and just cut Internet service to it periodically. The turnover in IT kept the Security Head (the ham) busy renegotiating service behind their firewall. So he eventually got them to put it on the guest WiFi sector and it’s been serving the area reliably ever since.

But N5DU and I led the effort to add more digi’s in the greater Jackson area, donating ones to the Vicksburg Club, a tower east of us that the manager (also a ham) gladly installed, a node at a nuclear power plant at Port Gipson, and one down I-55 South near Crystal Springs. But only one iGate to serve them really got in the way of educating the other digi managers to configure the right number of “hops” to effectively get to an iGate.

So I used my remaining Baofeng HT with a small footprint PC (Dell OptiPlex 160 Tiny Desktop, bought for $40 shipped via eBay) and a software modem to create a second iGate in my home (K4FMH-10). As the picture from APRS Direct above illustrates, it’s in the large footprint of the JARC digi installed on a water tower in Madison, MS to the NW of my QTH on the Barnett Rez. (See inset of my iGate’s estimated footprint by APRS-Direct. No, KI5JCL-9 isn’t riding a horse. He just has a sense of humor!)

It’s stored in the bottom of a builtin cabinet in my small library / printer closet adjacent to my 2nd floor office. It’s 3 miles from a nearby APRS Digi maintained by the Jackson ARC (my friend N5WDG maintains their repeaters and other digi devices). And, it sits in the supplied Baofeng charger. For over 2 years, working faithfully. Until it didn’t. And that’s the focus of this story.

The higher power battery is a slim-line model. I thought that would be good for this little iGate-robot. (See the picture on the left.) And it has been.

Bobby KG5TGT later added a 2-way iGate to the Southwest of Jackson. It covers several Digipeaters on that side of town: the JARC’s 2nd digi on a broadcast tower, Vicksburg’s Digi (that N5DU and I donated), and the monster on a tower at the nuclear power plant outside of Port Gipson. FB all the way! Until this happened.

Yep, over a day’s period, the 2 year-old high power battery (Baofeng marketing-speak) hit it’s outer charge limit and expanded several times over the slim size that it was…well, the day before!

All this happened while I was in a recording session for the ICQ Podcast. Unbeknownst to Martin M1MRB and my fellow Presenters, I simply ordered a replacement on Amazon that was delivered in 2 days. The K4FMH-10 iGate was back shipping packets into the APRS network.

The moral? Oh heck. Just check your batteries periodically. While I thought I had, this could have produced a fire. Fortunately, I’m in that small room every day for various things and I look at the iGate system. But this expansion occurred over a 24-hour period. I should take steps to create a more robust iGate unit. But that might mean I’d become Baofeng-free!

Do you have a Baofeng lying around, getting no use? Find a way to put it to some good. But do check the battery from time to time.

This year, the Colorado 14er Event had the normal two-day (Saturday and Sunday) schedule plus two bonus days (Friday and Monday) for four activation days. Of course, Joyce/K0JJW and I decided to activate all four days using VHF/UHF frequencies. Frankly, we have not been doing that much hiking this year, so we were careful to lay out a plan that would work for us over four days.

Kaufman Ridge (W0C/SP-081)

On Friday, we hiked up Kaufman Ridge, which is a relatively easy summit near our cabin. I had an online meeting in the morning that caused us to get a late start this day, but we did chase some activators in the morning. On the summit, we worked a number of stations on VHF/UHF using the IC-705 transceiver. It was clear that most of the activators left their summit before noon, as is the usual practice for the 14ers and high peaks.

Normally, we focus our SOTA fun on VHF/UHF but this time I brought along an end-fed halfwave antenna for 20m and made a few 20m SSB contacts, including one with Elliot/K6EL on Mount Davidson (W6/NC-423). That’s right, a rare HF SOTA activation by K0NR. Joyce and I also turned in a log for Parks On The Air (POTA), which was San Isabel National Forest (K-4407).

Pikes Peak (W0C/FR-004)

On Saturday, I wanted to focus on making some 1.2 GHz (23 cm) contacts so we chose Pikes Peak as a good platform for that. Pikes is always fun because of its easy access (yes, we drove up) and its high location towering over eastern Colorado. We had Jon/KM4PEH and his wife join us on the summit, taking turns using the VHF/UHF bands. I made 42 QSOs on the various bands but my 23 cm contact with N0OY was the most exciting. I worked him in Salina KS on 1296.1 MHz using CW for a distance of 627km (392 mi). This is my new personal best for SOTA on that band.

Saturday was a good day for Summit-to-Summit (S2S) radio contacts, as I picked up 13 of them, all on VHF/UHF in Colorado. Joyce and I both worked Dave/W0ADV on Capitol Peak (W0C/SR-060) using 1.2 GHz FM. Capitol is a challenging climb, as shown in Dave’s video here.

Pikes Peak is in the Pike National Forest (K-4404), so we submitted our logs for POTA.

Mount Antero (W0C/SR-003)

On Sunday, we got up early and drove the Jeep up Mt Antero Road, parking at about 13,600 feet in elevation. This cuts a large chunk of the distance and elevation off the ascent to 14,268 feet. Besides, who wants to hike on a 4WD road anyway? It is still a decent climb over the rocky trail to get to the top.

This was my fourth SOTA activation of Antero, including its first activation back in 2011. (Actually, I’ve activated this many more times during the Colorado 14er Event, which predates SOTA in Colorado.) The activity was down a bit from Saturday and we were much further away from the large population centers, which is a factor on VHF/UHF. Still, we both made 17 QSOs, including five S2S contacts. We submitted our logs to POTA for San Isabel National Forest (K-4407).

Wander Ridge (W0C/SP-042)

On Monday, we activated one of our favorite summits near Cottonwood Pass, SP-042. Usually, I would refer to this as an Unnamed Summit (12,792), which is the name the SOTA database shows. Dave/W0ADV pointed out this summit does have a name: Wander Ridge, so I’ve adopted it for this special peak. The USGS approved that name in 2017 but it has not yet made it into the SOTA database.

From an outdoor hiking perspective, this was the best summit of the weekend. The hike starts at Cottonwood Pass and follows the Continental Divide Trail south toward the summit. Then, a short off-trail hike takes you to the summit. The weather and views were excellent!

The activity was a bit light but we both made 10 contacts, enough to qualify for a POTA activation (in addition to SOTA). This summit is right on the border of San Isabel NF and Gunnison NF, and we chose to activate it from the San Isabel side (K-4407). We only had one S2S contact, with Steve/K5SJC on Pikes Peak.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend with four excellent summit activations. It was wonderful to work our old and new SOTA friends on the VHF/UHF bands. My special thanks go to Pete/N0OY for firing up his mega 23cm station to work me on Pikes Peak.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Four Days of SOTA Fun appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

 In my last blog post, I had a comment from Tom a future ham and he asked me the question posted below. Since I am in Canada and my expertise is not the U.S. band plan for a technician class licence (or any other U.S. licence class for that matter) I asked him if I could start a new post featuring his question.  

The floor is your Tom...

 Hello. I thought this may be a place to get an answer. First, I am taking the test in September for my technician license. I am a CB operator and want to get into the ham world. Navy vet, electrical engineer, love radios and antenna theory. I am struggling with something. I really respect the knowledge of the amateur radio group. My struggle is understanding where the technician can operate. Google searches, YouTube searches, ARRL, Practice Tests, have yielded me the following:
1) Only HF
 2) HF and some bands of VHF
 3) Only 10-meters in HF
 4) ARRL band plan shows more
 5) HF and some bands of VFH, UHF.
Arrrgggg!!! I look at dates when I read things. This question is all over the place. Can one of you experts in here shed some light on this? Did something change? I understand the pool of questions for technician is now new as of July so maybe something changed….
Thanks for any help!!
– A future ham, Tom

 In advance, I would like to thank those who contribute to answering Tom's question. I am also sure we all wish him the best as he writes in September for his Technician licence.

 It's Tuesday early morning and I am greeting my first cup of java along with some radio time. I found myself drifting off to the weekend of radio operating. I very much enjoyed the Islands on the air contest (IOTA). It was also my plan to get K7K from Kiska island in the log as well. As the saying goes "sometimes things do not work out as planned".

I was keeping an eye on the DX clusters to see when K7K was on air and where. This year is my "year of CW" so I was looking forward to getting them in the log using CW. Again sometimes things don't work out as planned. I noticed once K7K was up and running that FT8 seemed to be their mode of choice for most of the time. I was reading on the cluster posts there were some upset ops... that very little time was spent on SSB or CW. 

I am not here to rag on FT8 and to be honest, I used this mode a great deal last year and very much enjoyed it. But having said that in my humble opinion they operated FT8 about 70-80 percent of the time and left modes such as SSB and CW alone. 

In the expeditions, defence conditions for them could not have been great and the Digi mode FT8 would sure fill their logs up and better than a poor showing in the log book. Also maybe the tide is shifting and with the Dx Peditions to come FT8 and other Digi modes may be the choice of the operators. 

I did notice K7K on their website indicated FT8 would be used but they also included CW and SSB.
There was an occasion CW and SSB were used but on a limited basis. I will chime in and say the only long period of time they used CW was in the IOTA contest. They are indeed an island and rare as well, it was expected for them to take part BUT this seemed to be the only time K7K used CW.

 I checked the clusters during the contest to see where they were. I did notice comments of frustration, K7K was operating split and some contest ops were calling on K7K calling frequency. Other comments indicated stations calling CQ contests in the responding TX frequency. Then I found they went back to FT8 in a very short time during the contest. 

This is just my humble blog opinion regarding the K7K "event" but when you indicate CW, SSB and FT8 on your site giving equal time to all would be a positive thing. From what I read in the cluster comments there were more than a few unhappy campers.

 The Islands on the air contest is sponsored by the Radio Society of Great Britain or RSGB for short. This contest is only 24 hours long and hosts some very nice DX from sometimes remote and DXpedition Islands. If memory serves me correctly I found this year to be more work to pull stations out. The QSB at this end was very deep. At one moment England was there at S5 and then gone. I'm not thinking it was just me as many stations I listened to were asking for report repeats. Oh well, it's all part and parcel of the contesting dream. 

I entered the CW-only category at 100 watts and it was the first time using my new Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna. As everyone has told me and it is true the vertical antenna is a bit noisier than my horizontal End Fed BUT I had better results with the Hustler 4BTV. The very small extra noise with the vertical was taken care of with the noise reduction on the Icom 7610. 

For me, this was not a contest where I was running (calling CQ contest) it was 99% search and pounce. The reason for this was Island stations gave you 15 points compared to 2 points for all other contacts. The Island stations for the most part were running calling CQ contest. With this contest I found it harder to move up the band and bang off contacts and the reason for this was island contacts are big points and they are limited in numbers and that equals pile-ups.
Below is the score summary: 

Here are some takeaways of mine from the contest: 

- My CW is improving so the twice-daily practice time is helping. 

- Keeping my butt in the chair even during slow times helped my score. 

- Getting my backside out of bed early on the final day of the contest gave me the rewards of contacting     New Zealand, Austria and Hawaii, along with the 15 bonus points for each.

Contesting with a vertical compared to my End Fed antenna:

- Most all the time if I could hear them I could work them. 

- Omni directional was nice compared to End Fed horizontal directional characteristics. 

-Using the Icom 7610 second receiver to its full potential. I was able to listen to another band with the second receiver. I was not able to do this with the End Fed as I needed the tuner for all bands. I found without using the tuner the receive was very poor with the End Fed.

In this episode, Martin Butler (M1MRB)is joined by Chris Howard (M0TCH), Martin Rothwell (M0SGL), Frank Howell (K4FMH), and Leslie Butterfield (G0CIB)  to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in the episode's feature SOTA Mountain Adventure.

We would like to thank Scott Wright (K0MD), Richard Langmead (5B4AJG) and our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

• UK Direct to Full Examination Syllabus
• Traffic Messages in APRS Map Service
• National ARRL Program for School Teachers
• 144/430 MHz bands to be used for PMR during 2024 Olympics
• Radio Hams to Operate from Hot Air Balloon
• Flight Refuelling Amateur Radio Society Hamfest
• Commonwealth Games 2022 Amateur Radio Station on the Air
• Lack of Danish Ham Radio Training

Ham College episode 91 is now available for download.

Extra Class Exam Questions – Part 29.
E6F Electro-optical technology: photoconductivity, photovoltaic devices, optical sensors and encoders, optical isolation.

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