[K0NR] January VHF Contest Plus SOTA
 

Post : January VHF Contest Plus SOTA
URL : http://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2016/01/janvhfplussota/
Posted : January 31, 2016 at 2:27 pm
Author : K0NR
Categories : Contests, Ham Radio, Mountains, SOTA, VHF

http://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2016/0...rom-mt-herman/

Its been a while since I've done a January VHF contest from a mountaintop so
I decided to give it a try from Mount Herman (
http://www.sotawatch.org/summits.php?summit=W0C/FR-063 ) this year. The ARRL
recently changed the contest rules to allow the use of the national 2m fm
calling frequency for contests. See Coming Soon: 146.52 MHz in ARRL VHF
Contests (
http://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2015/0...-arrl-vhf-cont
ests/ ) . I wanted to see how this change would play out in practice when
doing a combination VHF Contest plus SOTA activation (
http://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2014/0...sota-plus-vhf/ ) . In
previous attempts, I had to vector the SOTA activity to another 2m fm
frequency for it to be a legal contact for the contest. The SOTA + Contest
operation is attractive because it has all the elements of a fun SOTA hike
coupled with the increased activity of a VHF contest. The contest brings out
the weak-signal folks with very capable stations, increasing the probability
of making some good DX contacts.

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