Your SOTA Goals for 2025!

For me, the SOTA year 2024 was shaped by the 10m challenge. I activated a lot of summits and most of them only at 10m… As a result, many chasers missed out. Sorry about that!

The goals for 2024 have been pushed somewhat into the background by this and the Tuscany challenge…

For 2025, I will go back to my roots. I will hike up the mountains with as little (homemade) equipment as possible (under 1 kg) and maybe take more time there… and focus more on the middle bands (30, 40, 60m).

As my son is moving to Bern, there is a closer proximity to HB9… so I will activate more there… and maybe finally visit the remaining 11 lowland summits.

I want to get to know as many new summits as possible. SOTA has shaped my travels in recent years! I have come to beautiful areas that I would probably never have visited without SOTA. (I have come up with a personal challenge for this - 1000 completes for my 70th birthday - I still have a little more than 6 years left)

Summary: As many new summits as possible with small equipment

73 Armin

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Well rolling over again my forever rolled-over goals for 23 and 24 seems pretty pointless, so lets keep it simple this year:

  • reach 425 uniques (keep on track for 500 in 2026)
  • another demi-goat

Both being achievable at a stretch.

and steering well clear of any more big sparks from above.

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MG #2. Big 400 pt push for 2025 and build a KX0R inspired antenna coupler.

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Thanks for being in a good part of my logs! And I hope that in the future your daughter will also be in my log.
Have a Happy and Prolific 2025

I also felt a little sorry for leaving out many faithful local chasers (7 mhz). This is the “negative” aspect of 28 mhz.
73, Happy Xmas and Happy New Year

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2025 will be continuing how I’ve ended 2024:

  • Working towards qualifying all GM/ES (although distant, wee hills like GM/ES-074 will be tricky to justify the journey)
  • Some overnight trips to slightly further afield Scottish summits
  • Where possible, try different routes for summits I’ve already done but will revisit
  • Take a chunk of points out of the gap to my first MG. 500-600 would be ideal, but I’ll do the other things first and it’ll be whatever it is.
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Activating goals:

Activate another 10 or so unique summits in W4V, toward a long-term goal of activating all publicly accessible ones in the association. By long-term, we’re talking geologic time scales at my current rate.

Continue activating only uniques. Admittedly, the further away they get, the more tempting it becomes to repeat a summit, particularly for S2S events.

Publish access notes and GPS tracks where needed.

Finally get around to building a dipole with parallel-wire feed for use with a wide-range auto-tuner; the goals being faster band hopping than with my linked dipole, and better radiation efficiency than my end-fed wire.

Chasing goals:

Chase less! The 10 m Challenge, and the tremendous volume of summit activity it brought about, gradually pulled me into a rather absurd amount of chasing by the end. It’s been fun but also unsustainable in the long run. (Still, thanks for the QSOs, activators!)

Continue toward a long-term goal of chasing all publicly accessible W4V summits. This is slow going now. The only ones left are seldom activated.

73,
Matt

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I notice there are ALOT of unactivated summits in the reigon… I assume they are not publicly accessible ones?? youll have to forgive me as I dont know how it works in the states, here in the UK pretty much every summit is openly accessible, either via public footpaths, or by being open access land!

Alan

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We don’t have the same rights of public access here in the US. When a summit is on private land, one needs the owner’s permission to access it, and many land owners are not interested.

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That’s harsh. Hopefully, in France the mountains are public domain and free to access.

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My main target for 2025 is to make MG before my 60th birthday in November.

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Aims ( plans suggest some kind of organisation and with current non-radio related happenings its hard to plan anything) :-

More outings - I said that last year and actually did 1 less.

Something in the Ghz bands - I dont care what, just something.

Attend the Hog Roast - because its fun.

1Kw on HF power to antenna from a summit. Why? Just for the hell of it. I’ve done 1Kw erp on 70cm but that was easy with a 100w (It was actually about 80) and a 19 element beam (15db gain).

Use a Rhombic from a summit.

I might not be the most prolific activator or chaser but maybe I can carve out a niche as being one of the most ridiculous :slight_smile:

And finally , probably the hardest challenge of them all - make 1 contact from G/SP-017 with a Quansheng UV-K5(8).

Ian
G7ADF

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Mine will be

Walk 500 miles in a year.

Actually activate a SOTA summit

Activate G/SP-013 Gun and see if I can beat my previous logged station record of 116 QSOs

Get the FT227 working properly.

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Complete MG2, I have 26 to go.
David
G0EVV

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Ill admit to having done that, although with the help of a SOTAbeams 2M bandpass filter! however if you want to try, let me know! I can get Billinge a 59+++ from a kids PMR 446 handheld! :smiley: :smiley:

Alan

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Activate my first summit.

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  1. Get to 1500 points.
  2. Activate more peaks outside my usual haunts.
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Activate a few summits in JA5 this spring :smiley:

73, Martin PE1EEC/PE6X

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Go to the VK SOTA get together in Hotham in March.
My first 20 summits next year should build my Activating score to Mountain Goat x 2.
Might even get a 10 pointer summit next year if my old body is still going ok.
Regards 73 cu in 2025.
Ian vk5cz …

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On my list is really EI/IS and especially the Carrauntoohil. And I would also like to go to LA for a number of summits. And in the winter period to a warm island or country.
And maybe another > 2000m SOTA. Enough plans, now the time :slight_smile:

Happy X-mas and Holiday.

73 - Tonnie - PA9CW

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