Been licensed for ever, not active for years and I’ve just wandered back into Amateur Radio. Was leaning towards QRP and CW and like climbing things, so was so pleased to find SOTA.
Still working on getting rusty CW back together and gear as well so will start out with some QRP SSB activations and see how I get on. I’m down in Brighton so we’ve got some easy local activations.
Welcome to SOTA Graeme. Hopefully catch you on an activation or two sometime soon.
As Brian says, it is addictive. You will most likely need to save up those pennies as your fuel bill will rise. My records indicate that I have traveled over 62,000 miles since I started with this activity in February 2006.
Time to get activating if possible Andy, the waistline goes down pretty quickly after a few activations!
Also one of the licensed a long time (1974) but away from the hobby for 35+ years group, came back to find I had HF rights and got busy in contests and DXPeditions (managed to actually go on one, and worked as PR officer on another), before I found SOTA - now addicted like all the others on this reflector!
It doesn’t stop me activating Ed. It’s just that I don’t feel like a mountain goat these days (notwithstanding the 1000 points) - slow but sure is the new motto:walking_man:t2:
Welcome Graeme.
You’ve made a great choice. Lots of us here with the same “likes”.
Probably a lot has changed, equipment wise, if you’ve been out of the hobby for a while.
It’s worth starting to look around at the many lightweight options for CW/QRP.