My first SOTA activity report

Hello all, I had a wonderful time activating Sugarloaf in Ireland (EI/IE-022). I was on holiday operating as EI/WN3F. When my Irish host suggested visiting this peak I thought it would be a nice chance to try SOTA, so I brought my handheld for 2 meters FM.

Given the nice weather on Saturday and the previous trip reports I was not too surprised to see a large number of people enjoying the outdoors at Sugarloaf but there was plenty of space at the summit to operate with the handheld. I just used the small factory antenna but was able to spot myself and was quickly answered by friendly operators across the Irish Sea. I fumbled a bit with my β€œnew” callsign but everyone was patient and helpful. It was a lot of fun and particularly gratifying after some lack of success earlier in my trip making contacts on HF.

Thanks to Jim G0CQK for helping me understand that the S2S contacts needed to be in the conventional activation log submission as well as the summit-to-summit submission.

6 Likes

That is a great first activation, Roy. When you get back home, please continue your activations and hopefully we will meet on the air.

Ron and Liz
KI4TN and K1LIZ

1 Like

Hi Roy,

Glad to read of new SOTA ops finding it fun. It is all a matter of finding a formula that works for you. A combination of alerts placed a day earlier if possible, self-spotting when you are actually on the air and logging the contacts in some way. Then uploading the contacts, either individually or as a csv file in the specified format lets you track your score.

73

Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH
Currently in Bayonne, France.

1 Like