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