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For the long Labor Day weekend, Joyce (K0JJW) and I headed to the cabin in the mountains. My main objective was to work the Colorado QSO Party. See previous post.

When in the mountains, I try to remember to monitor 146.52 MHz. You never know who might show up on that frequency…some of the locals chatting, a mobile station passing through, people camping or…a SOTA (Summits On The Air) station.

Sure enough, on Saturday, I heard Eric (W0ECE) calling from the summit of Mount Evans on 146.52 MHz. Joyce and I gave him a SOTA contact (and I got a new county for the CO QSO Party). Then, on Sunday morning, we heard Dave (KI6YMZ) calling from the summit of Mount Shavano, also on 146.52 MHz. We were mobile at the time and both of us worked Dave to give him two contacts. Then on Monday morning, again listening to 146.52 MHz, we heard Bob (AD6QF) on Quandary Peak. We handed out two more contacts.

Sometime on Monday morning, we started thinking of doing a hike. That led to the idea of hiking up Kaufman Ridge North (W0/SP-085), a SOTA peak about 2 miles from our cabin. It had not been activated before,  so that seemed like a good idea.

Except for the fact that I did not bring along any of my SOTA gear. (Note to self: whenever you are in the mountains, take along the SOTA gear.) I scrounged around the cabin and found a dualband HT with fully charged battery. Unfortunately, the only antenna was the rubber duck. (The World’s Most Convenient Crummy Antenna.)

Oh, what the heck, we gave it a try anyway. It was an easy climb to the summit. I got out the HT and called on 146.52 MHz. I quickly got a reply from Ben (KD0ELP) and Mark (KE0P). A little more calling and I raised Jerry (N0VXE) in Salida, CO. To get the minimum four contacts, I tried calling on two of the local repeaters and found Dave (K0HTX) who QSY’d to 446.00 MHz for a simplex contact with me. That made it an official SOTA activation, so we headed down the mountain.

A good weekend for SOTA activity. Keep listening on 146.52 MHz.

73, Bob K0NR

Here’s a video of my contact from Mt. Sneffels with Stu W0STU on Pikes Peak during the Colorado 14er Event. The QSO was made on 2M FM with 5W of transmit power on both ends.

Here is the report on the Colorado 14er Event operation from Mount Sneffels. Joyce K0JJW and I drove our Jeep up to the “upper trailhead” for Sneffels, arriving at 6 AM. The 14ers.com web site describes the trailhead and route.
On paper, the climb is not that difficult but there is quite a bit of loose rock that you have to navigate…annoying on the ascent and very tiring on the descent. We reached the summit at 9AM and fired up the radio gear.

Mt Sneffels (and the other peaks in the San Juans) is a long distance from many of the fourteeners. Take a look at the fourteener map on 14ers.com. Previously, I had operated from Pikes Peak where you hear tons of stations calling and Mount Antero which is centrally located so you can easily work all of the 14ers. Operating from Mt Sneffels is different — kind of like you have fallen off the edge of the earth.

We soon found that the omnidirectional antennas were not that effective at pulling out the other 14er stations and that the Arrow II yagi antenna was the way to go. I’ll so some more analysis on this later.

Most of the contacts were made with the Yaesu FT-817 but we also used a pair of HTs. Note that we used both FM and SSB.

I had my Yaesu VX-8GR burping out APRS packets for the upper half of the hike but it appears they only made it to an IGate when we were on the summit.

The weather was awesome so we stayed on the summit until 11:40 AM. After we finally worked Pikes, we decided to head down. The clouds were building but we did not expect it to amount to much. But the storm moved in quickly and we did get snowed on while hiking down.

Radio Log

Local
Time  Freq        Callsign  Location    Comments
 0934 144.200 USB   N0KE    near Silt   Phil, 100 miles away
 0949 432.100 USB   N0KE    near Silt
 0954 147.420 FM    W0NX    Quandary    Keith, strong signal
 1006 147.420 FM    WE7C    near Cortez Glen, 70 miles away
 1018 147.510 FM    WO9S    Mt Evans    Jon
 1049 147.450 FM    KM5TY   Huron       Strong signal
 1058 147.435 FM    KD0EGE  Lincoln
 1100 147.420 FM    KC0VFO  aeronautical mobile
 1110 147.420 FM    KT0AM   Shavano     Mark, strong signal
 1115 147.420 FM    KI6ASW  Blanca      Strong signal
 1130 144.200 USB   KB0SA   Pikes Peak  Eric
 1132 144.200 USB   W0STU   Pikes Peak  Stu
 1135 147.480 FM    W0STU   Pikes Peak  Stu

Joyce ended up logging for me and pointing the antenna, so she only worked Glen WE7C on 147.42 MHz. She also got to explain to the other hikers what the heck we were doing. People seemed genuinely interested and when we told them we just talked to Quandary or Evans, they’d say “that’s cool.”

This was a Summits On the Air activation, the first ever for Mount Sneffels (W0/UR-001). All in all, a good day playing ham radio in the mountains.

Thanks to everyone that came out to play.

73, Bob K0NR

Just a quick reminder that the Colorado 14er Event is happening this Sunday. I am going to try to make it up Mt Sneffels down in the San Juan range and operate 2 Meters and 70 cm. This will also be a SOTA activation (W0/UR-001).

For more information, see http://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2012/07/colorado-14er-event-now-with-sota/

73, Bob K0NR

I recently confessed blogged about a not-that-well-executed SOTA (Summits on The Air) activation, in How Not to Do a SOTA Activation. This past weekend, I made another run at it with much better results. Still, I did use a slacker low impact approach to the activation.

My hiking partner spouse and I decided to go for a hike on Sunday afternoon. It had been many years since we had climbed up to the fire lookout on Devils Head in Pike National Forest, so that sounded like a great destination. There is an excellent view at the top (fire lookouts tend to be like that) and the weather was awesome. I checked the SOTA list, and sure enough, Devils Head is a legitimate SOTA peak (W0/FR-051).

The hike is about 2.8 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 950 feet. I put this in the category of a good tourist hike…with just enough huffing and puffing to make you think you worked for it but not so much that it kills you. Here’s the topo map and route taken from everytrail.com: 

As I put together my daypack, I tossed in my Yaesu FT-60 handheld radio and a 1/2-wave vertical whip antenna. This was going to be a 2M FM operation only.  (I don’t have anything against HF, but there is something magic about VHF propagation with a little altitude.) Then I sent a quick message to a couple of the local email lists asking for people to try to work me on the summit. We drove to the trailhead and started our hike up the trail, which is heavily used but well maintained.

The fire lookout is not a tower. It sits on top of a large rock formation with stairs leading up the side of the rock.

When we got to the top, we spent some time enjoying the view and catching our breath. As the sign says, the stairs have 143 steps which take you to an elevation of 9748 feet.

I got out the radio and started calling CQ on 146.52 MHz. Ted (NØNKG) came right back to me…I think he probably saw my email message. Over the next half hour, I worked a total of 7 contacts: NØNKG, N2RL, NØGWM, W7RTX, WB9QDL, KØDEN and WXØPIX. I even remembered to bring along a log book and a pen to write it all down.

Bill Ellis staffs the fire lookout for the US Forest Service most of the time during the summer. He handed me a card that certifies that I climbed up to the lookout station. Note that this card indicates that it is the 100th anniversary of the fire lookout! And Bill’s been doing this for 26 years. Cool!

Various people have said that Devils Head is a must do hike in Colorado and I have to agree (whether you are doing a SOTA activation or not). It turns out that I was the second person to activate Devils Head as a SOTA summit, with Chuck (N6UHB) having done it in October 2011. I’ll probably do some more of this since it is a nice blend of ham radio, hiking and enjoying the view from a high spot.

   73, Bob K0NR

This weekend my wife and I were out exploring the San Juan Mountains near Ouray, Colorado. We found ourselves on a Jeep road to Engineer Pass. When we got to the pass, we stopped to have lunch and I examined the high peaks nearby. I saw some people on the summit of one of the peaks, which I determined was Engineer Mountain by looking at a topo map.

Hmmm, I said to myself, Engineer Mountain is a valid peak (W0/SJ-011, 12968 feet elevation) for a Summits On the Air (SOTA) activation. The only portable radio I had with me was a Yaesu VX-8GR with the stock rubber duck antenna. Not a great SOTA station. But if I could whistle up 4 contacts on 2M FM simplex, I would have a legitimate activation. We had already decided to climb to the summit, so any radio activity was just icing on the cake.

So off we went up the mountain. I got to the top and started calling on 146.52 MHz FM. Now it hits me that we are in the middle of a national forest, away from population centers and, to top it off, no one is expecting a SOTA activation here today. This might be a bit of a challenge to make 4 contacts. Then Thomas, KRØNK, answered my CQ. OK, there’s one contact. A little bit later Dave, AKØMR, comes on frequency and gives me a second contact. Both of these guys were in Grand Junction, CO, which is about 100 miles from Engineer Mountain. Not bad for a peanut-whistle HT using a standard rubber duck antenna.

I needed two more contacts. I tuned around for a repeater in the area and came across the 147.27 MHz machine which turned out to be a stones throw away from my location. It requires a CTCSS tone, so I fumbled around until I figured that out. No, I did not have a repeater directory with me…that was safely stored in the Jeep at the bottom of the mountain. I gave a quick call with my location and Ben WB5ITS came back to me. We QSY’d over to 146.52 to make my third contact.  Anticipating a rough go of it, I asked my wife Joyce K0JJW to descend off the peak while I remained at the top, so she could be my fourth contact. (SOTA rules do not allow contacts between parties on the same peak.)

Somewhere along the way, I reach for a piece of paper to log the contacts, only to find that I did not have a writing utensil with me. Duh. I would have to remember the times and callsigns of the contacts and write them down later.

I completed the fourth contact and headed down. Later that evening I checked the ListsofJohn database and found that there are actually two peaks in the area called Engineer Mountain. Go figure. The SOTA database only recognizes one of them…of course, you guessed it, not the one I was on. It turns out that the Engineer Mountain I was on is subordinated by an adjacent peak: Darley Mountain (W0/RG-034, 13260 feet). However, since I operated from 13,218 feet on my Engineer Mountain, it is within the 75 foot vertical activation zone for Darley Mountain. So, this does count for a SOTA activation of Darley Mountain.

This is where I could claim that incredible skill, flexibility and a little luck ruled the day. I think a more appropriate analysis is to concede that a complete lack of planning and preparedness produced a marginal result.

What can we learn from this?

• Do your homework concerning the SOTA peak that you intend to activate before you start the climb. Make sure you know where it is and that you are really on it.
• Always keep a notepad and pen/ pencil in your backpack
• Even for casual hikes, take along a decent antenna for the HT. A half-wave vertical is way better than a stock rubber duck.
• Plan in advance so you can post your intended SOTA activation on sotawatch.org
• Have a repeater directory (or equivalent) available to identify repeaters in the area.
• And don’t forgot the normal hiking Ten Essentials

Beyond doing a SOTA activation, some of these items could be important if an emergency should occur. It runs out there was no mobile phone coverage in the area. I used to be pretty vigilant about taking an HT with spare batteries and extended antenna along on hikes but have gotten sloppy lately. See Rescue on Uncompahgre Peak, which describes an incident years ago when my radio turned out to be very useful during an emergency.

In the end, I did complete my first SOTA activation, so I can be happy about that. And it gave me the opportunity to relearn a few things about planning and being prepared.

73, Bob KØNR

P.S. The WØ SOTA guys recently created a great W0 SOTA page.

I recently wrote about the Summits On The Air (SOTA) program gaining traction here in Colorado. Catching up on some of my podcast listening, I came across Jerry KD0BIK’s Practical Amateur Radio Podcast (PARP) on the topic of SOTA. It turns out that Jerry has gotten hooked on the SOTA program and has been out activating some of the Colorado peaks in December.

Operating a ham radio on top of a mountain during winter may seem like the act of a person with only one oar in the water (or shall we say one half of a dipole in the air?). But actually, we’ve had quite a few days of favorable weather that have been begging us to get outdoors in December. Still, I am on guard for an activation by Jerry in the middle of a blizzard, as he seems a bit smitten by this SOTA thing.

Episode 49 of PARP introduces the SOTA concept near the end of the episode, which is followed by a deeper SOTA discussion in Episode 50. These two episodes run about 25 minutes each, so take some time out to give them a listen.

73, Bob K0NR