Getting Started

Nine Years Later

Fast-forward nine years and I’ve activated my 1,000th summit and earned Mountain Goat #5.   My friend Dale, AA7OY, who lives in Alpine, AZ agreed to coordinate our Goat Award summits on the same day.  Dale was about to hit his 4x goat so we chose a summit, and headed out.  Dales is an awesome guy and we’ve done a lot of summits together in the past.  We hike together whenever we can when I travel up to my summer getaway near Alpine, AZ.  I love hiking the mountains in that area where I grew up,  and I know the area well.  I’ve done all the summits in that area, including several in New Mexico.  

For our goat summit, Dale and I chose W7A/AP-006, St. Peter’s Dome.  It’s one of our favorites, but I think it's one of the most difficult steep hikes in that area.  Prior to the hike, I did a few summits for zero points so that my Goat-Day summit would be my 1,000th activation. The hike is a touch over a mile, and a climb of 673 feet.  The summit is at 9,673 feet.  Note - everything gets harder after 8,000 feet.  We each had a very nice operating position on top, surrounded by huge pines and oaks.  It was probably 75F, with a slight breeze, and was overcast as the thunderstorms started to build in the area.  Dale and I really enjoyed soaking up the experience.  There was a bit of pressure to wrap it up given approaching thunderstorms.  With plenty of contacts in the bag, we headed to the car for a celebratory beverage and then into Springerville for a celebratory lunch.  WOW!  What a day!

I’ve learned a lot since my first activation.  Clearly I’ve learned more about radio through experience, help from others, and studying for my Extra exam. I learned how to lower my pack weight, build antennas, and improve my hiking and navigating skills. SOTA drove me to learn CW.  I learned when lightning is too close through experience.  I also learned what not to fall on and therefore got to practice my first aid skills from a summit.  I’ve had fun building dipoles, random wire antennas, and end-fed half-wave antennas from the K6ARK store.  I built a QCX mini radio and worked Spain the first time out with it.  Right now I’m learning about 900Mhz LoRa radios and Meshcore.  It’s quite a journey.

All of this learning was helped along by others in the SOTA community, which is one of the best things about SOTA.  I’ve made a lot of friends because of this hobby and I have a LOT of people to thank for helping me get to Goat number 5, activation number 1000, and tons of fun along the way.

The first person I met  in person after starting SOTA was Adam, K6ARK, who I call my “SOTA Yoda”.  He brought me up to speed on SOTA, gave me antennas, inspired me to learn CW, gave me great hiking and camping tips, loadout suggestions, etc.  We hiked together and did several overnight SOTA campouts.  Adam and I kicked off the first SoCal SOTA campout in 2018.  Adam and I drove up to Big Bear, CA and immediately hiked up the first summit at sunset. While on the summit, Adam and I had a blast working DX like crazy during the SSB WW contest.   I was running 100W SSB and was 59 into Asiatic Russia, New Zealand, etc.  Solar conditions must have been unusually high because New Zealand came in so strong, I had to turn down the gain to understand him.  It was a blast.  We did something similar with Jacob, W6RWS on Whale Peak, running big stations during the evening for the SSB contest a year or so later.  Jacob and I do a lot of hiking together as well.

I’ve introduced Dale and Jacob above, and then there is Ted, W6TED.  We have become great friends because of this hobby.  We’ve hiked, camped and played radio all over the place.  Thanks to Ted and his overland machinery, we’ve done some summits I wouldn’t have ordinarily done.  I helped Ted on “The Road To Goat” in Arizona, where we camped, hiked, and activated 19 summits in 5 days to get Ted to Goat.  That was a kick.

The NASOTA slackers have been a tremendous help in learning various pieces of this hobby and it’s led to making more friends, more hiking, more SOTA, and a hell of a lot of fun.

I made another load of friends and learned new tricks of the hobby every time I attended the W7W campout, aka “SOTA Camp” as well as the W6 SoCal campout organized by Mike K6STR and Lorene W6LOR.  Campouts are always a fun place to make new friends, meet people you have only spoken to on the radio, and reacquaint with old friends, and oh yeah, activate a bunch of summits.  This year I met up with Rey, KD8EQA, in Sequoia National park.  We were both headed to the W7W campout and he was coming in from Colorado.  We did some joint activations and had a blast before the campout even started.   A few years ago, I meet Igor from Italy. He came to San Diego and was doing SOTA. I worked him on the radio and he reached out for info on summits. We've done a bunch of summits together and had a few beers too.