My article that describes last year’s SOTA/POTA/VHF contest activation from Pikes Peak appears in the June issue of QST magazine. This VHF/UHF activation occurred on the Saturday of the ARRL June VHF Contest and qualified for Summits On The Air (W0C/FR-004 Pikes Peak) and Parks On The Air (K-4404 Pike National Forest). The article highlights the use of the North America Adventure Frequency of 146.58 MHz.

I made 80 radio contacts that day, on the 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 70cm, and 23cm bands. Not a great score for the VHF contest but quite nice for a VHF SOTA and POTA activation. My primary piece of equipment was the ICOM IC-705, which enabled all modes on the main VHF/UHF frequencies.

If you are an ARRL member, look for the article on Page 58 of the print edition of June QST or the online version. Not an ARRL member? Darn, you should fix that if you want to read articles published in QST.

If you are an ARRL member, please look at the article and consider voting for it in the QST Cover Plaque Award. Thanks!

73 Bob K0NR

The post June QST: SOTA, POTA and VHF Contest appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

I do a lot of SOTA activating using 2m FM and have developed a few operating habits that can really make a difference. These may seem obvious but might be overlooked by operators new to the game. To get an overview of using VHF for SOTA, look at this article: How to Do A VHF SOTA Activation.

Here are three operating tips when using 2m FM for SOTA:

1. Upgrade Your Antenna

A handheld radio is commonly used for SOTA operation because it is a self-contained, compact radio. These radios always come with a rubber duck (electrically-short monopole) antenna. These antennas vary in quality but they are universally poor performers compared to a half-wave radiator. I’ve measured the effectiveness of many rubber duck antennas on 2 meters and they are somewhere between 8 and 12 dB worse than a half-wave radiator. So an easy upgrade is to use a half-wave telescoping antenna. Another popular option with a half-wave radiator is the roll-up J-pole (often called a “Slim Jim” antenna). An even better choice is a small 3-element Yagi such as the 146-3 from Arrow antenna,  which is about 6 dB better than a halfwave antenna. Keep in mind that the Yagi should be held vertically-oriented for FM operating.

2. Open Your Squelch

The squelch circuit in an FM receiver requires the signal to be large enough to flip the squelch open. When operating at weak signal levels, the squelch may mask a signal that is actually readable. A recommended technique is to just open up the squelch control and let the FM noise come through. This maximizes the opportunity to pick out that weak signal out of the noise.

3. Point Your Antenna Everywhere

If you have a directional antenna, make sure you methodically point it in a variety of directions when calling CQ. For example, with a 3-element Yagi, you should divide up the 360 degrees around you into 45-degree sections. Point north, make a call, point northeast, make a call, point east, make a call, and so forth. Also be aware that the direct path to another station may not be the strongest path. This is especially true if you have tall summits around you that can block or reflect your signal. Many times I’ve pointed in the “right direction” to work another station but then found that the signals were strongest with the antenna pointed away from the direct path. So the secret is go ahead and try different antenna orientations to maximize the signal strength, even when you know the physical direction to the other station. Sometimes the radio waves decide to take another path.

Those are my three tips for today.
Do you have any to add?

73 Bob K0NR

The post Three Tips for 2m FM SOTA appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Last year, Joyce/K0JJW and I tried to activate Red Mountain Number 3 (W0C/UR-016) for SOTA in the San Juan mountains. The map showed there was a road to the top, so we were expecting easy access. However, the road is gated off about 2 miles from the summit, requiring a hike. So we hiked almost to the summit but turned back when the thunderstorms rolled in. We retreated to safety and vowed to return another day.

This week, we went back and activated the summit, along with Stu/W0STU and Liz/KT0LIZ. Red Mountain No. 3 sits just southwest of its sister summits: Red Mountain No.1 and Red Mountain No. 2. (Red Mtn 1 is also a SOTA summit, so we’ll need to activate that one sometime.)

We accessed Red Mountain 3 (RM3) by taking Highway 550 to Red Mountain Pass. The road for RM3 is County Road 14 but is not well marked. The turnoff (shown on the map above) is just south of Red Mtn Pass, going to the east (37.89587, -107.71369). County Road 14 is a narrow but easy road, barely 4WD, that leads to the gate (37.89476, -107.70774). We parked there and hiked up the road.

I don’t usually like to hike on roads but this one turned out to be just fine. It was a nice, easy grade and was flat without a lot of rocks poking up. My GPS app shows that we hiked 2 miles one-way with 1400 vertical feet. We met about a dozen people on the hike, so this seems like a popular summit. We noted other trails and roads in the area and wondered if some of them might provide a better route but everyone we saw just used the road.

As you can see from the photos, we had excellent weather that day. This time, no thunderstorms to chase us off the peak!

Stu/W0STU examines his VHF/UHF handheld, positioning it for optimum signal level.The San Juan mountains are remote, with not a lot of people within VHF range. We were all using just VHF/UHF for SOTA, so I was concerned we could get skunked on making our four SOTA contacts. There are a few smaller towns within range and we might be able to work Grand Junction from there. I knew that Lloyd/W7SAO in Delta usually monitors 146.52 MHz and we worked him right away. After that, we called our fellow campers, James/KD0MFO and Vic/KD0OGE, working them mobile near Ridgway. We kept calling for a fourth contact and sure enough, Mike/KE5YF showed up on 2m FM. Mike is from Sweetwater, TX and was driving his Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) over Engineer Pass. So we made our four contacts to qualify for SOTA points.

The four of us had a great day on the summit. We took our time and enjoyed the hike and the radio operating. The easy access and excellent views from the top make this an attractive SOTA summit if you are traveling in this area.

73 Bob K0NR

The post SOTA Success on Red Mountain #3 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Last year, Joyce/K0JJW and I tried to activate Red Mountain Number 3 (W0C/UR-016) for SOTA in the San Juan mountains. The map showed there was a road to the top, so we were expecting easy access. However, the road is gated off about 2 miles from the summit, requiring a hike. So we hiked almost to the summit but turned back when the thunderstorms rolled in. We retreated to safety and vowed to return another day.

This week, we went back and activated the summit, along with Stu/W0STU and Liz/KT0LIZ. Red Mountain No. 3 sits just southwest of its sister summits: Red Mountain No.1 and Red Mountain No. 2. (Red Mtn 1 is also a SOTA summit, so we’ll need to activate that one sometime.)

We accessed Red Mountain 3 (RM3) by taking Highway 550 to Red Mountain Pass. The road for RM3 is County Road 14 but is not well marked. The turnoff (shown on the map above) is just south of Red Mtn Pass, going to the east (37.89587, -107.71369). County Road 14 is a narrow but easy road, barely 4WD, that leads to the gate (37.89476, -107.70774). We parked there and hiked up the road.

I don’t usually like to hike on roads but this one turned out to be just fine. It was a nice, easy grade and was flat without a lot of rocks poking up. My GPS app shows that we hiked 2 miles one-way with 1400 vertical feet. We met about a dozen people on the hike, so this seems like a popular summit. We noted other trails and roads in the area and wondered if some of them might provide a better route but everyone we saw just used the road.

As you can see from the photos, we had excellent weather that day. This time, no thunderstorms to chase us off the peak!

Stu/W0STU examines his VHF/UHF handheld, positioning it for optimum signal level.The San Juan mountains are remote, with not a lot of people within VHF range. We were all using just VHF/UHF for SOTA, so I was concerned we could get skunked on making our four SOTA contacts. There are a few smaller towns within range and we might be able to work Grand Junction from there. I knew that Lloyd/W7SAO in Delta usually monitors 146.52 MHz and we worked him right away. After that, we called our fellow campers, James/KD0MFO and Vic/KD0OGE, working them mobile near Ridgway. We kept calling for a fourth contact and sure enough, Mike/KE5YF showed up on 2m FM. Mike is from Sweetwater, TX and was driving his Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) over Engineer Pass. So we made our four contacts to qualify for SOTA points.

The four of us had a great day on the summit. We took our time and enjoyed the hike and the radio operating. The easy access and excellent views from the top make this an attractive SOTA summit if you are traveling in this area.

73 Bob K0NR

The post SOTA Success on Red Mountain #3 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

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.

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.

While planning for the 2022 Colorado 14er Event, I decided to focus on making some long-distance contacts on 1.2 GHz (23 cm). Last year, Dave/W0ADV and I worked summit-to-summit (S2S) at a distance of  244 km (152.6 miles), which is my best result so far. See my previous post here…

Using 1.2 GHz in the Colorado 14er Event

For this year’s event, I wanted to beat that distance so I checked in with the usual SOTA activators that use the 23 cm band, wondering if any of them would be on summits that would support such an effort. I was thinking in terms of another S2S contact using portable FM handheld radios. I identified a few summits in the San Juan mountains that might work, from Pikes Peak or Mount Evans. Also, northern New Mexico has some potential summits, but I did not find anyone interested in activating them.

Knowing that Lauren/N0LD has done quite a bit of VHF/UHF operating from Pikes, I figured he would have some insight concerning summits that are workable from Pikes. We connected via telephone and discussed some options. In that conversation, he suggested I reach out to two hams that have serious 23 cm stations in Kansas: N0LL and N0OY. This shifted my thinking away from S2S contacts to working a UHF station out on the plains. (Kansas has a noticeable lack of SOTA summits.) Pikes Peak (W0C/FR-004) is well-suited to this approach, being easy to access with a road to the top and an excellent radio horizon to the east. I sent an email to Larry/N0LL and Pete/N0OY to see if they were available. Larry replied that his 23 cm gear was currently off the air but Pete said that he was available to give it a try.

The distance from Pikes Peak (W0C/FR-004) to N0OY is almost 400 miles, so the FM handheld radio approach was probably not going to work. My ICOM IC-9700 was the way to go, with 10 watts of RF power to a Yagi antenna. Pete used an ICOM IC-705 to drive a transverter that supplies 50 watts of RF to an 8-foot dish antenna at 45 feet. I chuckled when I heard this because the IC-705 is a popular SOTA rig…just not usually found on 23 cm.

Joyce/K0JJW and I made it to the summit a bit early and immediately set up for the 23 cm attempt. Normally, we operate on the west side of the summit, away from the visitors center and most of the tourists. For 23 cm, I wanted the best shot possible to the east, so we walked over to the boardwalk on the north side of the summit. It sticks out enough to give an excellent view due east.

Once I was set up, I sent a text message to Pete asking him to start transmitting my direction on 1296.1 MHz. We had agreed to start with CW, our most efficient mode, and perhaps later try SSB. He started with a series of CW dashes and I could easily pick up his signal. Joyce pointed the antenna for me, finding the best direction to peak the signal. Pete’s signal was not terribly strong, but solid copy, only a few dB above my noise floor. Because he was running more power than me (about 7 dB), I was concerned that he would not be able to hear me. I called him using CW and initially, he did not respond. We kept trying and my signal came up a bit at his end and we were able to complete the contact. Conditions were marginal enough that we did not try SSB. (Sorry, Joyce missed out on this one…she doesn’t work CW.)

SOTA Requirements

Although we drove to the summit of Pikes Peak, we made sure we were SOTA compliant. Our normal approach on a drive-up summit is to load up our backpacks with a portable station and hike some distance away from our vehicle. My IC-9700 is not exactly a compact transceiver but it is portable enough to transport some distance and it can be powered using a small Bioenno battery. I’ve carried this size radio (often an FT-991) on other SOTA activations, hiking a mile or two with it. It certainly adds weight to my pack, but it is manageable. The antenna was a Comet CYA-1216E, about 5 feet long, with 16 elements and a specified gain of 16.6 dBi.

So this is my new personal best for 23 cm SOTA:628 km, 392 miles. My thanks go to Pete/N0OY for getting on the air and giving this a try. His station was doing more than half the work with this radio contact. I’ve done SOTA QSOs like this with other weak-signal VHF/UHF operators. They may not be active SOTA chasers but they like the challenge of completing a difficult contact. I really appreciate them getting on the air with me. It’s all part of having fun messing around with radios.

This raises the question of what’s next?
Maybe I can get N0OY to move his station another 50 km to the east for another attempt. Probably not.

Stay tuned.

73 Bob K0NR

The post SOTA 23 cm QSO with N0OY appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.