Just a heads up that Joyce K0JJW and I will be visiting American Samoa KH8 from May 27 to June 9. This started out as a trip to visit the US National Park there. Of course, I noticed there were summits on the islands but no SOTA Association. So now I am the Association Manager, go figure. The SOTA Management Team did a great job of setting up this Association. In particular, Simon Melhuish did the data wrangling, and I filled in with some text for the ARM.
Many of you know we generally limit our SOTA activity to frequencies above 50 MHz (Height Above Average Terrain, and all that.) However, we will make an exception for KH8 and break out the HF gear. We will operate as KH8/K0NR and KH8/K0JJW using 20m thru 10m on SSB, FT8 & FT4, using an IC-705 with 10 watts to wire antennas.
We should have basic internet connectivity, so we will post Alerts and Spots on SOTAwatch.
We are also looking for skeds with local operators on 6m and 2m (any mode). Email: kh8@k0nr.com
Off the summits, we will likely activate American Samoa National Park (AS-0001) for POTA with a bit more power. We may also activate KH8, outside the park, time permitting. I refer to this as a Slacker DXpedition.
QSL via LoTW only (and SOTA database, of course).
We hope to work you from the only US territory south of the equator.
KH8 is the most Southerly association in the US, with reverse seasons, so SSB with ten watts is going to be interesting. Which peaks are you focusing on, Bob? I’d like to add info about car rental, hotels and restaurants on a few resource pages, since we left that out of the ARM.
K0JJW and I activated these three summits: Mount Alava – KH8/TI-003 Olotele MountainKH8/TI-004 Tumu Mountain – KH8/MI-003
Olotele Mountain is a driveup but we encountered a strong thunderstorm, so we made a few contacts on VHF and abandoned the attempt. We will probably return there later and run up a proper number of QSOs.
On Alava and Tumu, FT8 on 17m and 15m worked out pretty well for us. We did not bother with SSB. Internet access has been sketchy, so I have not submitted the logs yet.
Except for a return trip to Olotele, we are done with SOTA but we will do some more POTA activations, AS-0001.