I know that a lot of you on here may have known Sean @M0GIA as he was very active on amateur radio and was fairly involved with SOTA as well. Me and my dad Tom @M1EYP have known Sean M0GIA for many years now and him along with his children Daniel and Tash have become good family friends. Me and my dad Tom M1EYP first knew Sean through amateur radio and from this, we found out that he lived in the same QTH as me and my dad Tom M1EYP in Macclesfield. It was me and my dad Tom M1EYP who got Sean M0GIA interested in SOTA.
Some of you may remember that Sean M0GIA was very keen to see loads of SOTA activity worldwide and this was how he came up the the idea of having International SOTA weekends every May Day Bank Holiday each year to try and increase world wide SOTA activity. I remember International SOTA weekends taking places in the May Day Bank Holiday weekends in 2009 and 2010 which were a success and afterwards International SOTA weekends weren’t really needed as it was soon the case that most days had loads of worldwide SOTA activity and this is still the case now and I think this was down the success of International SOTA weekends that Sean M0GIA did organise. Another thing that Sean M0GIA was passionate about in SOTA was his enthusiasm for building cheap homemade resonant quarterwave antennas with elevated groundplane and he used such antennas when activating SOTA summits. It was Sean M0GIA’s success of building cheap homemade resonant quarterwave antennas with elevated groundplane that he was able to work loads of DX just using 5 watts.
Sadly, I found out this morning that Sean M0GIA has sadly passed away on Saturday 22nd February 2025. This was a complete shock as this was something I wasn’t expecting and I know that Sean M0GIA was activate on his Facebook only a few days beforehand. I had loads of QSO’s on amateur radio with Sean M0GIA over the years and I enjoyed doing some joint SOTA activations as well, the highlight being my 21st Birthday SOTA activation back in September 2013 where, me, my dad Tom M1EYP and Sean M0GIA all activated Esgeiriau Gwynion GW/NW-031. For just over the past 11 years now Sean M0GIA lived in narrowboat on the Macclesfield canal to which I remember doing a couple of cruises on the Macclesfield canal with Sean M0GIA on his narrowboat. This narrowboat had a radio shack from which Sean M0GIA was able to make loads of VHF and HF contacts from this narrowboat.
My condolences go to Sean M0GIA’s children Daniel and Tash, Sean M0GIA’s grandson Leon (Tash’s son) who was born nearly 2 years ago and the rest of Sean M0GIA’s family also. I who that loads of people in amateur radio will miss Sean M0GIA as loads of radio amateurs across the world knew him.
This below photo of Sean M0GIA on Gun G/SP-013 on the first of the first ever International SOTA weekend (Saturday 2nd May 2009) organised by Sean M0GIA himself.
Jimmy M0HGY
