Time

Well the good news is I have more time for radio ops. Great timefor learning new things. Plan to operate portable in a park or two while in FL over the Holidays.

Hope everyone has a safe and good holiday.

POTA and CPOTA

Well I have found 2 groups similar to SOTA that I believe the SOTA Team and the rest of the KTARC will want to participate in.
POTA, Parks on the Air is similar to SOTA except that it is designed for National and State Parks. CPOTA is similar except it is for County and City Parks. There is a list of approved National and State Parks and I assume CPOTA is the same for City and County Parks.
This is great because most all of these parks are accessible by everyone.
I look forward to many POTA and CPOTA activations. It will be even more fun with more people and running QRP or any output wattage. There is no power restriction at this time other than legal power limits and what you are willing to lug around.

I will keep all updated as we move in this direction.

Had great fun working the Tugaloo bike ride this past weekend!

SOTA Team News

We are not going to the mountains this weekend. We have decided to be chasers. Sometime soon we will just have a mountain top exploration to determine what mountains we want to activate next.

Our Team has decided and invited the KTARC to participate in 1 day field days through out the year. We will pick some Saturdays throughout the year to conduct these operations. We will also pick parks that are accessible by all participants. It will  be fun.

The guidelines for these 1 day field days are as follows:

•  Hours:  9:00 am to 3PM. You can come earlier or stay later or do both.
• You must bring all your own equipment.
• Operate QRP on battery power
• Bring your own snacks and food
• You can work all bands, all modes for which you are licensed
• Make as many contacts as you are able
• Learn from others about equipment, techniques, etc.
• Learn how to be prepared for future emergency operations

I look forward to these ops.

We will continue to pursue activating SC mountains as SOTA operations.

Keep your signal strong and clear!

Sassafrass Mountain Activation

Saturday, October the 8th, was a beautiful day to activate Sassafrass Mountain. The weather was a perfect fall day. As I sat on the Summit Overlook with my FT 817 and Buddiepole rigged for 40 meters working 5 stations before the big guns working contests took over my frequency, I viewed the beautiful mountains, lakes and blue haze.

My friends, Gil KS4YX, Steve W4SLT, Steve WA5KSC, Sue KJ4DLP and Chase KJ4LXC all had a great time as we worked stations from around the world on 10 meters, 40 meters, 20 meters and 2 meters.

I can tell you for sure that an antenna analyzer makes life a lot easier when tuning up antennas!

I learned a lot about how to prepare and execute a SOTA operation and look forward to many more.

We are Official

The Upcountry SOTA Expedition team is official and our Alert has been posted to the SOTA Alert site. All our frequencies etc. are posted. We will have a review posted of our experience once we have compelted the expedition. We hope to work may stations.

Pre-Epedition Meting

We have had our final pre-epedition meeting and it seems we are green and go! The wx looks like it will be very nice. We have six members joining the expedition. We hope to not only activate Sassafrass Summit, but also get a lot of points working QRP. I hope that we make a ton of contacts. Most important of all we will have fun!

Talk to you from the summit!

Preparation, Preparation, Preparation

Today, I will take my SOTA Gear bags apart and put back together. I will finish all the little details for a good expedition. Tomorrow, I will take my bag to our SOTA Expedition meeting to review with the team.
After the meeting I will make the final adjustments for the expedition.
This is going to be fun!

Next Sota Expediton meeting

We are having our next meeting this week and our  1st expedition a week from Saturday! This will tell us how prepared we really are at this time. A great learning opportunity for the team!

Logistics

Well in true fashion, I will probably pack way more than is needed. I always do. So I plan to observe carefully and take note as to what is the best bare minimum set up. Toting gear a long way up a mountain may not be fun. So we want to learn light.

I am excited about learning new aspects of QRP radio.

Preparing for our first Sota

Well the SOTA Cracker team has met and began an inventory each of us have to determine what we will be taking on our first expedition. I think the team is excited about our first attempt. I know I am. We will see how much we leave behind for our next expedition. This first expedition will be our shakedown trip and a great learning experience.