Each year I’m sent away to Boston, MA on a company conference, this year I decided to take the radio and activate some of the nearby (well nearish) SOTA summits. I’d planned with some likeminded colleagues to visit the White Mountains in New Hampshire, about 3 hours north of Boston. We’d arrive on Friday evening ...
This string of 5 summits along the South Downs way in Sussex had been on my hit list for some time. I’d always consciously saved them for a nice summers day. Michael G0POT had activated this string of summits before and had given me a lot of his logistical planning – I’ve built on this ...
Reaching 500 activator points was my target for 2017 and I’ve peaked early! The tipping point was an unexpected trip to Snowdonia in Wales in April, where I activated 11 summits for 75 points. This took me beyond 500 points but officially marked me reaching the half way point to becoming a full mountain goat (1000 ...
This was the second day of my Storm Desmond SOTA activations in Mid-Wales (see Plynlimon and Drosgol activation reports) back in December 2015. Unfortunately the weather was looking even worse than the day before from the B&B! After a full English (or should that be Welsh?) breakfast I set off towards the summit of Pen Y Garn (GW/MW-004) ...
In April I finally finished a big project at work and had some time off to relax – the perfect break would be some walking in the Snowdonia National Park in North Wales. Of course the first thing that usually happens when I start to relax is that I get a cold, annoyingly this happened ...
Recently I’ve been shooting a number of videos for YouTube outlining the kit I use for SOTA and now I’ve done one showing how I go about activating a SOTA summit. It’s a step by step guide to carrying out a SOTA activation in the great outdoors. It covers the set-up, spotting, operating procedure ...
On Sunday I went out portable with my Elecraft KX3 to see if I could make some inter-G contacts on the 60m band. 40m wasn’t supporting NVIS and the Worked All Europe (WAE) contest was dominating 20m, so my QRP station was struggling to be heard with only Cyprus and Asiatic Russia worked on 10w, ...
I’ve thought about doing a YouTube film (you can Subscribe to my channel here) of the kit I use for my SOTA and Portable amateur radio operations for some time now. Yesterday I finally got around to it and made the most of calm and sunny conditions (quite rare here in England!). The selected equipment ...
While out portable yesterday I tuned around 20m, keen to see if I could hear any DX during the Worked All Europe (WAE) SSB contest. What I experienced, is I can only assume, Long Path (LP) Asian DX. Essentially the Short Path (SP) would have been within a path of darkness from East to West. ...
One very common question I get about portable Amateur Radio operation is what do I use as a battery? I have answered this question individually more times than I can mention so I thought I’d write it up as a post to help others. I’ve used everything from car batteries, Sealed Lead Acid Batteries (SLAB), ...