Thinking of doing my first SOTA summit this weekend

Others have provided good advice already.

I suggest several basic things will help:

  1. Make a checklist before your planned operation, listing all the radio gear, food and water, shelter, comfort items (such as something to sit on, a tarp to spread gear on) and revise the list as you gain experience. You will probably find that experience helps you to reduce the load as you find out what was not necessary, like heavy batteries, and to add important items to the “must have” list.

  2. From this forum and others (such as Yahoo NA SOTA group) find others who have activated the target summit and have written up their experiences - there is almost always something to learn from past activations. If nothing found on forums, look at the sotadata or sotawatch website and find out who has activated those summits, contact them and ask for hints. Sometimes even advice such as “park your car at the green gate” is really valuable.

  3. Do joint activations with others, aiming to reduce the risk, learn from more experienced activators, add to your own experience. Nobody was born knowing how to be a SOTA activator, everyone gradually learned the ropes by doing it.

  4. For local contacts nothing beats knowing the locals or being able to post something on the local mailing list (or even a facebook group). In times of poor HF conditions, qualifying a summit via local VHF contacts can save you revisiting the summit just to do it all again. Using the local fm repeaters to request simplex contacts is another legitimate tactic.

Hope this helps. Enjoy being an activator.

73 Andrew VK1DA VK2UH

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That depends on how easy you find it to put up! The two dipole legs and one guy should be OK once in place.

What I do is stand one of my walking poles with three guys, and then bungee the fishing pole to that. It is easy to do, even in high wind. It is also easy to take the pole down, swap antennas (HF to VHF) and put it up again.
Also, if you have a telescopic pole with a collapsed length of 600mm (2 feet) or so, then when you guy it, the guys will be two or three sections up. That means that in wind, the guy is pulling downwards and can cause a collapse - not so with my arrangement.

Adrian
G4AZS

I’ve activated Mt. Agamenticus (W1/AM-381), and it is indeed a drive-up situation. Be aware that they are rather picky about staying on the trails, so the operating area is somewhat limited. Also, there are some big comms towers and power lines that further limit your options. There are a couple of places you can look at that have trees that should suit. I set up a bit downhill from where the circled X is, but used a 10 meter pole. (See map and photo) That tree you see there might do the job, actually!

Good luck on your activation!

Bruce - WB8OGK

Oh, and if you are looking for a good pole, this is the one I usually use - Jackite Fiberglass Telescoping Kite Pole, Black, 31' at BestNest.com They make a 28 footer as well for a bit cheaper. The top section of the pole is pretty useless, so I have a piece of PEX tubing that slides down to the first joint as the top of my dipole. Keeps it from all bending over too much. It works well, but don’t try to put too much tension on your wires or it will flex all over. A guy system (paracord) about 6-8 feet up will keep the thing upright in most conditions. My guy ring is a big ziptie, with smaller zipties spaced around it that hold the knotted end of the paracord. The big ziptie “ring” is sized to slide down to a convenient joint in the pole. Easy and light. I used fluorescent orange cord with some bright orange duct tape flags at intervals for the guy lines and it’s saved a lot of people from blundering into it. Folks are pretty oblivious, especially when they are intent on seeing your radio.

I have the SOTABeams pole too, but I find it’s too flexible for my tastes. Nice and short for packing tho!

Update: I was able to get my first activation! I arrived quite a bit early, and to my disappointment, both of the frequencies I had issued an alert to were in use, so I shifted up, down, etc and called CQ to no avail for probably 3 hours. I was also struggling with a ton of atmospheric noise, and a rainstorm narrowly missed me. Finally decided I should self-spot on the SOTA Spotter app (I was hoping to get my first activation without needing cell signal), and got 5 contacts in a matter of minutes on 20m!

I feel like there should be a SOP for when your alerted frequency happens to be in use (i.e. shift up in 3kHz increments until you get a clear frequency). I’m not sure how practical this would be in use though, as the station I hear that is using the frequency might not be audible to chasers, so they might have no way of knowing I shifted up or down.

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