Foundations of Amateur Radio

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SOTA goat adventures ...

Posted: 24 Dec 2016 09:00 AM PST


Foundations of Amateur Radio Last week I went on an adventure and came
home with an experience. I've been wanting to go out and play radio for a
while. Work has been spectacularly unhelpful in making time available to
achieve this, not to mention the 17 million other things vying for my
undivided attention. Last week the planets aligned and my outing came to
pass. I'd set my sights on doing a SOTA activation. If you're not familiar
with that, SOTA is an acronym for Summits On The Air and the aim is to get
to the top of a mountain and make contacts from there. I've previously been
under the tutelage and presence of some very experienced SOTA hams and
during a conference in Canberra last year I managed to activate several
summits with others. I even managed to survive walking up one peak on my
own, using my hand-held to make some contacts. I use the word survive in
less than ironic terms because I relied on Google Maps to navigate me up to
the peak and for reasons best known to Google, it walked me up the side of
the peak that didn't actually have a track, even though the map was adamant
that I should follow the path. Many, many hours later, not properly
dressed, not enough food, weather coming in, batteries running low, I
managed to get back down safely and hobbled to a taxi who brought me back
to my hotel. It was memorable, but not for the right reasons and it didn't
involve HF communications and at the moment I'm struggling to recall if I
actually logged those contacts. That will be a job for another day.
Anyway, as I said, the planets aligned and I had a day to myself, access to
the car, a charged radio battery pack, a working antenna and a map that
worked. Mind you, I spent an hour fighting technology. First to register on
the SOTA web-site, then to activate the software on my phone, then to get
Google Maps to actually navigate me to the peak and for it to download the
off-line maps, so I could navigate whilst out of mobile phone range. Lesson
learned, plan to do the technology before the day. So, I set off an hour
later than planned, but I was finally on my way. Google Maps again let me
down by navigating a different route than I wanted, since I had the choice
of more or less dirt road and I wanted less. Google picked the other one,
even though I pointed it at the one I wanted. Another lesson learned, make
sure that you add markers to your route before Google Maps starts you on
your way, since there is no changing it once you're driving. After an hour
and a bit I arrived at the top of the peak. If you're interested, it was
Mount Dale, or SOTA peak VK6/SW-036, but before you go looking for my log,
stick around, there's more to the story. So, I set-up my antenna, a
multi-tap Outbacker and set it to 40m. I appeared to have mobile phone
coverage, so I added my spot to the SOTA-watch website and started calling
CQ. I managed my first contact within 8 minutes of my advertised time start
time, so I was pretty chuffed. For the next few hours on 40m and 15m I
managed contacts with 23 stations. The biggest distance I managed was 5353
km, or 1071 km per Watt. Not bad for a vertical antenna mounted to my car.
I did some experiments along the way with turning my car around, getting
better and worse signals, but overall it was great. I had a little play
with 2m, but didn't manage anything other than talking on the local
repeater, which is located 24 kilometres away and about 250 meters lower
down. One friend suggested that there was a satellite pass coming over
later in the day, but by the time I'd been there for four hours I was
cooked. It wasn't spectacularly hot or anything, but it was time to go. No
satellite this time, but something to add to my list of things to check. I
came home and basked in the enjoyment of having gone out and made contacts,
more than I'd managed for most of the year. Very satisfied. The next
morning I found an email from the SOTA manager in VK6 who asked me about my
operating environment. After...
This posting includes a media file:
http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/founda...teur-radio.mp3