Totally agree and I’m sure many of our friends in GM/ES will agree. I like it on ice cream and have even purchased marmalade ice cream in the past.
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I wouldn’t mind trying that!
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I’ve always been interested in the outdoors.
1964(?) - at 14 a school friend and myself did the 40 mile Lyke Wake Walk across the North York Moors in less than 24 hrs- for me the 2nd time.
1966 - Radio Operator in RN - loved Morse.
1974 - left RN spent time, Hill walking, rock climbing, 
winter mountaineering, x- country & down hill skiing, snow holing. Scottish winter climbing for many years, Swiss Alps, Several mountain ranges in Spain, Ireland & Norway (avalanched!) Obtained my Mountain Leader Cert Qualfiication. several years as an outdoor instructor, also lead commercial groups on long distance walks in Ireland & the UK. Also took up kayaking & Canadian Canoeing - canoed very remote & wild rivers in the far north of Canada. Dave Perry's logbook: Canoeing the Thelon in Canada - June 2007
Competed against Cree, Metis, & Ojibwa Dave Perry's logbook: Fort Smith Aboriginal Games
1974 - 2017… During this time I often wished I could get back on the morse key as I quite missed morse. The old RAE was out of my reach. 
2017 Found a local amateur club on discovering the RAE was no longer. Joined and got my Foundation Licence. 
Then 3 well known SOTA lads told me about SOTA.
And that was it for me 
two or more hobbies in one. . (Thanks to GYSS, GOOE, G4OBK)
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Yoghurt (Greek) with marmalade is excellent and is Paddington 
approved.
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What an interesting idea. I’m really quite surprised to see the results so far.
I’m definately Mountains first… 30 years ish all around the world, then SOTA for the last 14 years.
In fact, I had a really rather odd route to my Amateur licence.
I was involved with a mountain rescue team and discovered no one in the team had any actual technical radio knowledge. I decided to get some formal learning and then immediately after passing my Foundation licence I discovered SOTA. My first QSO (other than the practice ones during my Foundation course) was from the summit of Foel Fenlli GW/NW-051 - with Bob G6ODU (who was a prolific chaser back then).
My second activation was from a rather “out of the way” Munro summit GM/WS-055, Sgurr Mor. In fact it’s so out if the way, no one else went there for SOTA for 10 years until Colwyn MM0YCJ paid a visit!
SOTA is the only amateur radio I take part in.
It’s taken me to some great summits around the world. I love all the people too, many who I have met and some I only speak with across the radio!
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Arrogantly twisting the sterile canvas snoot of a fully charged icing anointment utensil.
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More likely recording the results of that day’s quality assurance. Its a tough job but somebody has to do it!
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I like how this poll/topic has drifted into personal stories, it’s interesting to learn how people got started with SOTA.
My own story is rather plain.
I lived in a small village in ‘Bronté country’ from the age of 11. I enjoyed walking on the moors with my parent’s and also the bus service wasn’t very frequent so I’d walk or cycle nearly everywhere I wanted to go.
I’ve always been interested in Science and at middle school I saw a crystal set described in a science book in the school library. I knew that I wanted to build a crystal set at some point.
I was at upper school when I was doing an extra physics lesson (I did triple science - 3 GCSEs, whereas all, but just a small number of us, did single science, but equivalent to 2 GCSEs. The school timetable didn’t have enough space, so lunchtimes were sacrificed!), when I heard a radio from the science lab next door. I went to investigate and discovered some pupils playing with crystal sets they’d made, one of the crystal sets was plugged in to an electric guitar audio amplifier!
I was invited to join the school’s amateur radio club, meetings held in a science teacher’s office where he had an MFJ9420 set up. I was fascinated when I witnessed an SSB contact to Italy, I didn’t know that that was even possible!
That was back in 1996, and in the same year I went on a school trip to Ireland to tick off all of the Irish Furths (Ireland’s equivalent of Scotland’s Munros, peaks over 3000ft). I remember taking a little portable ‘world band’ radio from Tandy with me and tuning around whilst on the hill tops!
I left school and started at college, whilst I was at college I also joined the amateur radio course and took the summer 1997 RAE. I passed the exam and was issued with my call sign - M1BUU - in July 1997. I didn’t really know any amateurs at that point, only a couple of lads from upper school, who held novice call signs by then, and the school teacher.
Thankfully I found a local radio club and I ended up joining RAYNET and as the ‘young, fit one’ I’d be sent to checkpoints on hills!
Aged 20, I finally got a car and a year later I was ready for my first long distance solo road trip. I visited the Isle of Mull in Scotland and camped in my little tent for a week. It was 2001 and the FT-817 had just become available. I’d got a credit card by that point, so at a radio rally, I bought a brand new FT-817 with case. The cost was an eye-watering £819! (then add on the credit card interest!). I took the FT-817 with me to Mull and made one QSO! I did actually climb Ben More GM/SI-003, but SOTA didn’t exist at that point and I’d left my FT-817 in the car anyway! I still own the FT-817, it’s still in it’s original case and it still works!
Ben More summit, May 2001 pre SOTA
Occasionally I’d take the FT-817 out in the car and on one such occasion in early 2004 I heard Rod, M3HLD, as he was then, activating Pen Y Ghent G/NP-010. I called Rod and he explained about SOTA. I knew instantly that SOTA was a perfect fit for me. I started SOTA keenly, ticking off some hills, including Yr Wyddfa GW/NW-001 (Snowdon). I was young, free and single and thought nothing of just driving myself to Wales on a whim one day, camping at a very boggy campsite! A few weeks later, my life changed forever when I met a girl… 
SOTA became, and is, a very important part of my life. My son now has a call sign and sometimes goes up hills with me, so there’s a possibility he will take up SOTA at some point.
73, Colin
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Climber first. VHF Radio came along with membership of an off road driving club. I dabbled in HF.
Real uptake of the hobby came 15 years later when I started in SOTA, in 2020.
belay ledge on the classic rock climb in Applecross
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Personally (look away now if of sensitive disposition), I prefer Marmite on crumpets and Eggs Benedict using muffins - then there are those weird American muffins which are only acceptable if made with Blueberries
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Radio journey began as a 14 year-old SWL. Always loved hills but never been a true mountaineer. I thought a belay was a sub-standard egg and a crampon was a stomach complaint.
Although hailing from an east coast fishing town in Scotland, I always holidayed in the Highlands, later having the good sense to marry an Inverness lass who was a keen hillwalker. We lived in Fort William and Grantown-on-Spey so no excuses - it was upward from then on and many Munros, Corbetts, Grahams etc were to follow over the years, often with our two kids and two collies.
But still no radio licence. I had to wait until 2020 to pass my Foundation and started SOTA in 2022. Passed my Intermediate in 2024 but long boring health issues have drastically and frustratingly limited my activations.
I wish I’d had a radio licence when I was fitter and more able as I would now be much more of a Goat than a Sloth.
Pic shows me on Ben Macdui 40 years ago so it was definitely mountains first, SOTA later…
By the way, as fellow diabetics will testify, marmalade ice cream or chocolate muffins will hasten my untimely demise considerably …
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I believe that, for the activator, mountaineering first, even to reach the summit and use the radio later.
But, I vote for beer. 
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Was that the Nose from Middle Ledge or did you do the Direct? Nice route either way!
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I think it was the second belay ledge, the second time I was on the nose. The first time we took it direct by accident, forgetting to step right at the crucial moment!
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Radio first for me, but its a close run thing - and I wouldn’t call myself a mountaineer!
Growing up in Shropshire, I’ve enjoyed walking on the local hills for as long as I can remember.
On the other hand, my dad was interested in electronics, and so I also grew up amongst home brew projects, and “helped” to salvage parts from goverment surplus equipment as soon as I could hold a screwdriver!
I had built a few bits and pieces, and tuned around on the short wavebands, but I didn’t discover Amateur Radio as such until I started work, and met someone (later to be G4AZV, now SK) who knew a ham in his village, and we both joined the local radio club.
A licence followed in 1972.
I can’t remember exactly how I found SOTA, but it caught my interest, and has motivated me to visit many hills and mountains that I wouldn’t otherwise have thought of. Hard to say which I enjoy more, but radio and walking in high places compliment each other very well indeed!
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There is naught nor ought there be nothing
so exalted on the face of god’s grey
Earth as that prince of foods… THE MUFFIN!
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Wow. Like others have said, the results are a bit of a surprise to me. I would’ve guessed it would be muffins by a landslide.
I’ve really enjoyed hearing everybody’s responses. It’s fun to hear these origin stories.
I consider myself very fortunate to have grown up in a then-modest neighbourhood where a sizeable chaparral wilderness was within easy walking distance out our front door. Looming over our little village was a summit we called High Peak. To us it was Mount Everest. In fact the first time we tried to climb it we didn’t make it all the way. We camped about a quarter mile short at a place we called Base Camp. This was a big deal for 10 year olds.
About this time I became fascinated with astronomy. My hiking buddy and I would set up second-hand telescopes in our back yards and marvel at what we could see. I had no idea that such views were possible.
When the inevitable marine layer would roll in, my buddy had a small room in a detached garage out behind his house. We would sit at the VFO of his battered Hallicrafters S-38 and, again, I marveled at the signals we could pull in from all over the world. I had no idea that a modest telescope or shortwave could actually do stuff like that!
That idyllic little town I grew up in was Pacific Palisades. High Peak is obscured by the smoke:
My buddy’s radio shack/observatory today:
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Romain; Same here. I was doing the Hundred Peaks List with no notion of SOTA and long before I got my license.
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Said Frank Zappa. Mis-spent youth @MM0YCJ Colwyn?
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It seemed like a simple question, but I had to think about it and remember the past. Probably, both hobbies arose during my school years thanks to my mother. Until the 6th grade, I was a little interested in aircraft modeling, and my mother advised me to take up amateur radio. It all started with creating a crystal receiver in the company of school friends and reading the magazine “Radio”. From this magazine, I learned about the world of shortwave radio operators. Then there was a school radio club and the first attempts to go on the air on 10 meters AM. A little later, after finishing the 9th grade in 1978, my mother bought us two tickets for a planned mountain route in the Fann Mountains in Tajikistan. This is a traditional high-mountain climbing region with grandiose peaks. I was completely enchanted by the mountains. After entering medical school, I immediately signed up for a sports tourism club and began going on hiking trips in the Southern Urals and Siberia. In 1981, I received my current call sign and began working on a homemade tube transmitter on 10 meters AM. After graduating from the institute, I began to work in a mountaineering club. In the second half of the 80s, I went on several expeditions to seven-thousanders in the Pamirs and Tien Shan. In these expeditions, I attracted my comrade in radio Nil Rakhimov UV9WR as a radio operator. Using his set of homemade tube equipment - a transceiver UW3DI-II, amplifier and IV antenna for all ranges with power from a 220 volt gasoline generator, we worked from base mountaineering camps. Many years later, I came across a video on YouTube about the activation of peaks under the SOTA program. By this time, I was already the happy owner of an FT-817 transceiver. It took me two years to correspond with the program team, as a result of which it was possible to create a regional Ural association of the program. I am happy that with friends in the Urals and around the world I am involved in such a wonderful program, both of my main hobbies are mountains and radio!
- My first hike. Fann Mountains. Tajikistan.
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