Colin Evans, M1BUU, from near Haworth, West Yorkshire attained SOTA Mountain Goat on Saturday 28th January on the summit of Whernside, G/NP-004.
Colin took rather an unusual approach to his activation of Yorkshire’s highest mountain, by constructing his equipment whilst on the summit.
Colin had taken a QRPme 20m RockMite kit, a home made key kit, a home made vertical antenna kit and a gas powered soldering iron along with him. Sheltering from the wind, rain and snow in a small tent, Colin successfully constructed the RockMite, key and antenna in just under 4 hours.
The first QSO for Colin with his 250mW RockMite was with N1EU near Albany, New York, over 3000 miles away, the three subsequent QSO’s were with European stations, satisfying the SOTA rule requirement of four QSO’s to claim the activation points.
SOTA Mountain Goat is awarded for gaining 1000 SOTA Activator points. For more information, visit www.sota.org.uk
“Just wanted to pass on a link to a few videos I put
together in case you’d like to share them, especially the Yaesu
FT-817ND kit I put together.”
Adam has also posted some SOTA activation videos where he uses his go kit (click here to watch). I’m amazed that Adam manages to fit so much in that small box. Certainly a handy kit for hiking to a SOTA activation!
Thanks for sharing, Adam! I’ll add this link to our Going Portable page. If you have a portable set-up you would like to share, please contact me.
The Juras are located north of the western Alps, predominantly in France. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
I just received this message from Olivier Parriaux (F4GLD):
This supply is ready!
This Thursday [09 May 2013] we will activate, if time permits, the beautiful summit of Cret de gout which is located in the Jura mountains in JN26WD.
F/JU-004 – Cret de la Goutte Locator JN26wd
46.15140 ° N (46 ° 9 ‘5.0 “N) Longitude 5.86560 ° E (5 ° 51’ 56.2” E) 1621 meters, 5318 feet
Scheduled departure was 0300 TU [UTC] you should be able to follow the ascent via APRS.
We use + or – frequency QRP only Phone on 7/14/21/28 MHz bands depending on the propagation and F4OQU F4GLD Olivier Gilles.
HF Station KX3 5W max, Buddistick antenna, battery and three …
We also try to activate UHF
VHF F0FNC Laurent around 144,290 in SSB.
FT-817 5w max, DK7ZB antenna
We planned things on the air from 5h30/6h30 TU [UTC]
Hoping to see you on the air on Thursday.
73’s to all.
Like Olivier, if you’re planning a SOTA or QRP DXpedition of any stripe, contact me and I’ll be happy to post your announcement here on QRPer.
If you’re planning to attend the Charlotte, NC hamfest (March 8th and 9th), make a point to join the SOTA (Summits On The Air) forum. Christian (KF4LXB), provided me with details:
The forum itself is from 11:45am-12:45pm [Saturday March 9th] in the Cabarrus Room B. There will be total of five of us “SOTAteers” KF4LXB, W4ZV, KI4SVM, WH6LE, and W4ZTM with our kits. We hope to be able to set up a table outside of the conference room so we can have some extra “show and tell” time with our rigs for those interested. We want to get the word out to as many people as possible so we can share about something we all love.
QRP radios, product announcements, reviews, news and more. Low power amateur radio fun!
Please support QRPer by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. Ads are what helps us stay online. All of our ads are ham radio related--no junk, we promise! Thank you!
Colin Evans, M1BUU, from near Haworth, West Yorkshire attained SOTA Mountain Goat on Saturday 28th January on the summit of Whernside, G/NP-004.
