DD5LP Ed a Mountain goat now!

CONGRATS, ED!
Ken, K6HPx

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Great! Congratulations!
Jim G0CQK

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Many congratulations Ed. Well done - on to the next 1000 points! :grinning:

73, Gerald

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Congratulations Ed and hope to work you again.

73, Ludwig

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Congratulations Ed! Hope to hear all about it on the ICQ Podcast!
73 es Baaaa,
Keith KR7RK

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Thanks for all the nice words from everyone.

When I started in SOTA in July 2013 as VK2JI while still living on the Central Coast in VK2, I never thought I would ever get to be a mountain goat.

Over the years I have taken advantage of some “easier” 8 and 10 point summits but the majority of the points have come from the 1, 2 and 4 points summits, re-activating them each year, in several cases going back in winter to grab the bonus points.

While the 1000 points are special, let me tell anyone who is just starting on the SOTA activating trail that I found hitting the 100 point level to be more of a “buzz” than the 1000. It was the same situation in my chaser scoring. That 100 point level is a very important achievement.

I think it’s unlikely that I will get to a second or more Mountain Goat level and I think I will first look to achieve MG only with HF SSB and without winter bonus points being counted. At present my MG is a “Phone only” with 99% HF SSB but there are a few 2m FM qualified summits in there as well along with a lot of winter bonus points.

It’s nice that we can set our own personal challenges within the structure of the larger award scheme and we should all remember, this is a scheme to challenge ourselves, it is not a competition against others.

Thanks to Andy and the rest of the MT and of course all the Association Managers without whom, we wouldn’t have the scheme as it is today.

73 Ed DD5LP (mg).
P.S. if anyone is interested, I have documented every successful activation I have had on my blog at dd5lp (dot) com (or vk2ji (dot) com - same location). If you are thinking of activating any of these summits, the reports might help give a little guidance as to approach and what to look out for. This site also has documentation on my equipment used and antenna trials.

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Congratulations Ed!

73 de VE6JTW

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Hi Ed, congratulations for your achievement. Well done. :smiley: :beers:

cheers Geoff vk3sq

Congrats Ed !
Well done.
Luc ON7DQ

Well done Ed

Paul

Hallo Ed

Congrats auch von mir, das freut mich sehr! Toll, dass du die Bergziege nun auch geschafft hast. Da warst du nun wirklich lange unterwegs, “step by step”, das brauchte viel Geduld von dir, auch mit dir selber, hi. Bis zum nächsten QSO!

Vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ

Congratulations Ed!

Well done Ed

73
Graeme

Congratulations, Ed!

Congrats on your well-deserved mountain goat, Ed! Our contacts are a bit rare at the moment but look forward to many more!

73, Sylvia OE5YYN

Congratulations Ed for achieving mountaingoat status and thank you for S2S and all the other connections.

73, Rudi OE7RDI

My congratulations Ed. A great achievement. As G4VPX says, “welcome to the herd”. Now get yourself a Morse key and enjoy it all over again!!.

G0EVV MG, MG-CW

Congratulations Ed. I’m currently on 98 points so it’s really spurring me on to get to 100. Hopefully I’ll get to be an MG - it’s only taken me 4 years to get 9.8% of the way there. Please can you start doing CW so we can do a summit to summit.

73 de Richard

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Congratulations Ed.

73’s
David

Before you start a rumour. I’m tone deaf, have no musical talents and every time I’ve tried to learn Morse code, I’ve failed.

There’s also the reduced difficulty of making a DX contact on CW compared to SSB - with it’s narrower bandwidth, it can get through at lower signal strengths or under more QRM/QRN than SSB. I’m rather proud of the fact that I did the Mountain Goat, “the hard way” just using phone modes (99%SSB, 1% FM) - no CW, no Digital.

I have a great respect for people that can manage to understand CW but I’m never going to be one of them - sorry guys, you’re just going to have switch to SSB mode if you want an S2S with me.

73 Ed.

P.S. Good luck with breaking the 100 points Richard - it’s a very special achievement.

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