Dear all
Just remembered that I had written here in the reflector on this motivation topic after having achieved my Mountain Goat in 2019. So I went back to read this and to review it with my experience of 3 more years.
https://reflector.sota.org.uk/t/hb9diz-mountain-goat/20274/21
Yes, still true and still simple enough. The core for me is that I don’t do SOTA only as a pure amateur radio activity paired with a pure hiking activity. In general, SOTA for me is giving an additional meaning to a pile of stones called a summit. The summit is in its region, similar or different to my home region and easy or difficult, it offers its cultural environment being similar or different too. And the activator has to be nourished, so cuisine offers further insights that are always different from home.
Thus I enjoy especially SOTA holidays where I can discover the summits from a remote location. My curiosity bases on “Medium te (mundi) posui ut circumspiceres” – “I have put you amidst (the world) so that there you can better perceive all that”, following the ideas of Pico della Mirandola, an Italian philosopher of the Renaissance era.
But the real core for me is that SOTA is an activity with other people: radio partners on the frequency, local people living there resp. visiting and seeing all of this on holidays (or shorter day trips) together with my partner, with four eyes. That provides a feeling to me to be rich in an invisible way. And it supports the fire to continue.
So radio and hiking are somehow only on a second level for me. I don’t need to question my antenna constantly, and I can enjoy simple 1-pointers and their beauty, depending on what my health and age still permit to me.
I take note that some aspects are more and more routine now, so the effect of the SOTA medicine may fade out over time. But I would consider it a wrong way to simply make more SOTA then or do more spectacular SOTA or to do SOTA for its own sake to compensate this routine, like drugs being taken at a higher dosis. I assume that I will keep my bandwith as written above since it has proven now for more than five years for me to have good effects.
Vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ