My name is Marat Adgamov. My personal radio amateur callsign has been RA9WJV since 1981. I am a member of National Union of Radio Amateurs of Russia as well as an active member of the regional office of the Union (Bashkortostan Republic).
Along with radio amateur hobby, I have been interested in alpinism and hiking for many years. My first alpinist trips took place in 1978 in the Pamir-Alai Mountains; later I climbed summits in the Carpathians, Altai, Sayan and Caucasus Mountains, Tien-Shan, Pamir, Kopet Dag and South Urals.
I climbed mt. Elbrus along with my family in 2012, and hiked in Ala-Archa gorge (Tien Shan) in 2013.
I’ve always been trying to combine both of my interests: in 1989 and 1990 I conducted amateur short-wave radio communications (“in the field”) from alpine base camps at the foot of Lenin’s peak in Pamir and Pobeda Peak in Tien Shan mountains in Kirgizstan (RA9WJV/UM0N, RA9WJV/UM0Q).
Quite often I use portable VHF equipment to conduct Ham radio from some of the peaks in the Southern Urals; I have even written recently an article about local VHF/UHF competition that was published in the bulletin of the Union of Amateur Radio in Russia:http://www.srr.ru/DOCUMENTS/bulletin/bulletin_srr_2013_11_300.pdf
Last time I got a FT817ND transceiver to run HF communication in the field.
I am very interested in SOTA program and sincerely support its principles and ideas and general rules.
I believe that the region of Urals is perfectly suited for such program as SOTA: there are many summits, which are easy and safe to access without special alpinist equipment, good infrastructure (highways and railroads) eases the access to the starting points of hiking, in main mountain regions there are tourist shelters, and, finally, the amateur radio movement is quite developed in the region.
Therefore, Urals region has very good conditions for development of SOTA program. A radio amateur expedition can be organized to activate the most interesting summits for the first time.
With a great deal of consultations and support from Alex Naumov (UT4FJ), manager of Ukrainian Association of SOTA, I prepared a list of mountain references of Urals. My daughter assisted with translation in Russian of SOTA General Rules. Currently with her help I prepared a Reference Manual for Urals region in English (Association Reference Manual R9U-Russia-Urals).
Best regards,
Marat Adgamov RA9WJV. 73!