Tag Archives: KN3A Sota Journey

DAY4: A SOTA Adventure To Remember (Conclusion)

I hope the first two parts of my SOTA journey with Mark, NK8Q, has been interesting reading. It is really tough to put into words what the trip meant to me. Back in November I had my left knee replaced, and was preparing myself to possibly not be able to enjoy the luxury of being able to walk, run, hike and backpack. I never would have dreamed by the time this SOTA journey started that I already would have walked a half marathon on the new knee, nor be able to hike up summits. I have been truly blessed to be able to continue to do the things I enjoy. SOTA and POTA over the past year has renewed my interest in the hobby.

After we left Stony Man Mountain, we headed to the campground we were staying at along Skyline Drive. We lucked out earlier in the day by randomly arriving around 11:45 a.m. at the campground and even though the sign said it was full, the park ranger said to wait 15 minutes because there could be some checkouts right at the cutoff. We waited it out and at noon the ranger confirmed we had a campsite! Perfect…after 2 days of staying in motels, I finally got to camp in my new tent.

Once settled in, I thought it would be a good evening to set up my antenna and operate a little “late shift” on POTA – Shenandoah National Park (K-0064). I was just a bit too far off the A.T. to make it a “twofer”.  This yielded 16 QSOs and then called it  a night.

The next morning was also the last day of our SOTA trip. I woke up after a pretty restless night due to the fact my old body cannot tolerate being so low to the ground. I believe the last time I slept in an actual tent was in 1981 in boot camp at Parris Island. I am now a hammock camper and it sure feels much better on the back. So, back to the story. After breakfast we packed up and drove to the first of two SOTA summits before heading home.

The first was Pinnacle Overlook (W4V/SH-005). The climb took an unexpected wrong turn from the parking lot but quickly rectified. The hike to the summit was fairly steep, but there was beautiful flowers and rock formations and the summit was aptly named The Pinnacle. What a beautiful view of the Shenandoah National Forest.

We saw several thru hikers on our hike both up and back down the mountain after the activation. Several were interested in our ham radio operations. I found a perfect spot to operate from right along the Appalachian Trail and off to my left I could look over and see the view. I had 20 QSO’s and the bands were in decent shape.

It was time to head back down to the parking lot and continue our journey to the next stop, Hog Back Overlook (W4V/SH-007). There wasn’t much of a view once we climbed to the top of Hog Back, but met more through hikers, including one lady who was wearing a hat from Boston Marathon. Her trail name was GiGi, which is her Grandma name, which is also my wife’s Grandma name. She decided at age 65 she was going to hike the entire A.T. and had already run the Boston Marathon, so this was a bucket list item for her. I told her hiking the entire A.T. is my goal in 2026 when I’m retired and was nice to know there are hikers in our age group that are still able to accomplish these things. We gave her some trail magic, and Mark and I continued on our way to the top of the summit. There wasn’t much besides an old building which may have been a ham radio shack at one time, and some towers but not much of a view. We did a fairly quick activation and I had 12 QSO’s before packing it up. (I almost thought I heard the sound of banjos playing up there.)

We made a couple of other stops along the Skyline Drive, one was for the tunnel that was built along the route, and another stop to see the scenery from the outlook. It was time for me to start heading back to Lancaster County, which was about a 4 to 5 hour drive and Mark had two other summits he wanted to visit. What I did not expect to see at the one stop to look at the views was a lady who was sitting along the rock fence painting. I asked her if I could take a picture of her holding the picture she was painting and she gladly agreed. It took her about an hour to paint it and was finishing up when I arrived. After I left I regretted not thinking to ask her if I could have purchased the picture!

I arrived home around 5:30 pm on that Sunday evening and was completely exhausted. Mark sent me a text and told me at his next summit he was on the trail and saw GiGi again.

Thankfully, I had taken Monday off for a vacation day because I was exhausted from all the traveling Mark and I had done in 4 days. In addition to the driving, we did a lot of walking to the summits and operating. It was an experience neither of us will ever forget. We are already starting to plot our plans for next year for another adventure.

I’d like to thank Mark for putting this trip together and plotting out which Summits to do on each day and the best way to navigate to each destination. The hikers on the trail were all wonderful, and some of them asked questions about what we were doing, especially when we had our fishing poles at the summit with no trees. I used the HAMRS program for the 4 days, and other than some operator error, the program worked flawlessly. I especially would like to thank Thomas Witherspoon for allowing me to share my story on QRPer. Tom is an awesome ham and we share many of the same interests for POTA or SOTA, and we both enjoy antenna experimenting and our passion for QRP operating. Thank you again Thomas for the opportunity to share my experience, and I hope you enjoyed my SOTA experience.

73 Scott Lithgow
KN3A

Days 2 – 3: A SOTA Adventure To Remember (Part 2)

I would like to thank everyone for their positive and kind comments from my first part of the SOTA adventure with NK8Q. I have a slight correction to make, Cole Mountain was the first summit we did on Day 2. As you can see below in the pictures, there were no trees to hang our EFHW antennas, so we brought along our fishing poles. This generated a lot of interest from the A.T. thru hikers asking what we were doing. On particular hiker told us he’s seen others doing SOTA at summits throughout his journey from Georgia until that day. This was a fairly steep climb to get to, but the scenery was fantastic and well worth the walk. We offered trail magic to several of the hikers and we had very good conversation with them all.

Heading back down from the summit are a couple of other views we saw. There were some trees outside of the activation zone.

We packed up and started heading down the mountain to the parking lot around noon with the next destination Rocky Mountain (W4V/BR-001).

We drove almost 3 hours to get to this drive-up summit. The “S” turns and elevation changes were worth it though as there was so many spectacular views of the mountains. The last 4 or 5 miles was up a very steep gravel road that had me white knuckling until we got to the top. This was a site with several towers for different things and not a lot of view. I was able to get 10 QSO’s at the summit. I recall it was getting very warm that afternoon and I was not looking forward to the drive back down the mountain on the access road. I figured out how to do the manual shifting in my Tucson and Mark followed me down the hill. It was a non-issue and then we had a long drive to where we thought we would be able to camp on Skyline Drive.

I got my 4 SOTA QSO’s, time to relax.

When we finally got back onto paved roads and eventually into cell phone coverage briefly; we were hoping to find a place to get ice for the coolers and maybe a place to eat. Well, we found a gas station in the middle of nowhere with ice and a little store and they happened to be selling their own fried chicken and fries. When we got to the south end of Skyline Drive entrance, the sign showed all of the campgrounds were full. Since it was already getting dark, we made the decision to get on I-81 and head north and found a Super 8 Motel in Newmarket, VA for the night with the plan to get back to Skyline Drive at the Thornton Gap entrance. We got up early and looked for a gas station and a place to eat. Conveniently, Dunkin Donuts has a gas station as well (we didn’t realize that until after we got gas) but had a good breakfast sandwich each and I got a large coffee. I believe Mark is only the second person I’ve ever known who does not drink coffee. I believe my large cup was consumed before we got to Skyline Drive that morning, which I believe was about 18 miles.

First Summit of the day was Hazeltop Mountain (W4V/SH-004), which was south on Skyline Drive. The scenic outlooks were beautiful on the way to the summit.

Once we reached the summit, there was not much to see. I set up a few yards off the A.T. and made 15 contacts. The band conditions were pretty decent. This was my set up at this location.

Next stop – Hawksbill Mountain (W4V/SH-001).  It was just after 12 noon when we got to the parking area, and there was a good mile or so of steep uphill climbing. The reward at the top was worth the climb! I got another 20 QSO’s in the logbook at this summit.

This dial pointed to the many summits within view of Upper Hawksbill.

Final summit for the day was Stony Man Mountain (W4V/SH-002). This was another steep climb, but the reward was also a beautiful view.  I made 8 QSO’s and Mark and I shared the antenna and radio due to the limited space and all the people walking around at the summit.

I will continue with Part 3 of our journey to the Summits in Virginia in the next post. I hope I have half the writing skills that Tom Witherspoon has and that I was able to hold your interest in the SOTA journey that Mark and I did. I will wrap up the story with a Part 3. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Scott Lithgow
KN3A

Scott Lithgow (KN3A) is a contributor on QRPer.com. Click here to check out his previous posts.

Day 1: A SOTA Adventure To Remember (Part 1)

First of all, thank you so much Thomas Witherspoon (K4SWL) for allowing me the space to tell my recent story from my trip to Virginia. I hope you find it interesting. I certainly do not have Tom’s writing skills so I’ll do my best.

A quick introduction. I was licensed in 1983, call KA3LUW, as a Novice mostly a CW operator. I upgraded in 1992 to Extra with the 20 WPM code. I was mostly interested in DX and around 1996 went through some life changes and became inactive for several years until about 2003 when my Dad (N3FWI – now SK) gave me his Kenwood TS 450 to sell. I put up a temporary antenna and discovered PSK31. That actually got me back into ham radio as Dad let me keep the radio. At that point I changed my Extra call from WY3X to KN3A. Over the years my interest is still chasing DX and contesting. In 2015, I was chasing the W1AW year long event for the ARRL Centennial so I could confirm as many states on as many bands and modes as possible. When 2016 started, my ham friend, Mark, K3MRK told me I should get involved with NPOTA (National Parks on the Air) which was also celebrating their 100th anniversary. I was just so burned out from ARRL the prior year that I did not get involved. My interest in the hobby also started to wane as well, as I got into fitness due to health issues.

Fast forward to 2020. Mark continued to praise the now POTA program and all the fun he was having with it. It seemed to be something I would also enjoy as I could walk, hike and exercise as well as discover portable operations. On March 14, 2020, Mark convinced me to do a POTA activation with him at the local Sam Lewis State Park (K-1418) near my QTH. It was very cold and windy but we had a successful activation and I was hooked. Since then I’ve done 75 activations from 9 unique parks in 3 states. To say I am hooked is an understatement!

I have another good friend Mark, NK8Q, who is an avid Summits on the Air activator and chaser (SOTA). Mark lives about 2.5 hours west of me, and last summer we met and activated two Summits together. The first was a drive up summit and the second one required a little bit of hiking to reach the summit. I like the idea of walking, hiking and backpacking so SOTA is also something I enjoyed doing last year.

Two years in a row K3MRK and I have tried to get to Dayton, only to have them cancel due to the pandemic. I had scheduled a week off of work and decided to keep the time off and contacted Mark – NK8Q about possibly doing a backpacking SOTA adventure.

We talked about different places we could go to activate, and ultimately we decided to do several 10 point summits along the Blue Ridge Parkway, Skyline Drive and along the Appalachian Trail. For me, this was going to be not only a SOTA activation, but in some instances the activation also counts for POTA.  We both left our homes early morning on May 20 and meet in Natural Bridge, VA and we would spend the next 4 days heading north, while activating different summits. We actually realized about 100 miles north of Natural Bridge that Mark and I were only about a mile apart heading south on I-81, so we took advantage of 146.52 simplex the rest of the way to our starting point and we used FM simplex driving from summit to summit.

We arrived at Natural Bridge just before 10:00 a.m. and Mark asked if I wanted to activate K-3972 (Natural Bridge National Park). Sure, why not, it would be fun to do a quick activation. We found a nice spot to set up the antenna and radio. My equipment for this journey was a Sotabeams Bandspringer Midi and my ICOM 705. I put 11 QSO’s into the log the short time we were there and was a nice warm-up for what was ahead.

After the quick POTA activation, we started heading to our first summit, which was Apple Orchard Mountain (W4V/RA-001). This was along the Blue Ridge Parkway and the views heading there were spectacular. Once at the summit we explored the area and then found our operating spots. I made 20 QSO’s and 3 S2S (summit to summit).

Second summit was Cole Mountain. The parking area was about 700 feet below the summit of 4,020 ft. Most of this climb was along a private road that goes up to several towers and they were cutting the grass. They waved as we walked up and were also very close to the Appalachian Trail (AT). Cole Mountain yielded 27 QSO’s in a very short period of time.

We hiked back to the parking lot and proceeded to our next summit of the day at Petites Gap Trailhead where we went to Highcock Knob (W4V/RA-014) where we hiked about 700 feet in just over a mile. This was a fairly rocky and difficult climb and being tired from other summits and the drive down first thing in the morning, it was nice to be the last summit of the day. The elevation at the peak is 3,073. Mark and I had some issues getting our antennas through the trees at this summit and wasted a lot of time. Once the issue was resolved, I made 8 QSO’s. Mark and I decided it was time to start heading back to the parking area and call it a day. Since we were on the Appalachian Trail, we met many thru hikers heading from Georgia to their final destinations in May. Every one of them were really nice and eager to find out what we were doing at the summits and we made sure we had “trail magic” as they call it on the A.T. We carried extra water and snacks, and they were always much appreciated by the hikers. Just before we got back to the car, we met up with a hiker from Minnesota who was hanging his bear bag in a tree and he was preparing to camp for the night. When Mark and I got back to the car I thought, here I am with a cooler full of ice cold beer, I bet this man would appreciate a beer or two. I went back and he couldn’t get to the car fast enough! If you are ever hiking on the A.T. make sure you bring some trail magic as well. In the picture below, Mark was using my rig and we were right at the summit.

We left and went looking for a place to camp for the night. There were no campsites available so we stayed in a very old motel that I was afraid was going to be full of bed bugs or something. We survived and day 2 of the SOTA adventure was ready to begin.

(Part 2 is next)

Scott Lithgow (KN3A) is a contributor on QRPer.com. Click here to check out his previous posts.