VE6AB Mobile Ops
Summits On The Air
Noon local time finds me pulled over on a side road with a reasonably high vantage point, where I had set up to listen for Lewis VE6LEW and Ken VE6AGR who had hiked in to do a SOTA activation from the summit of Square Butte located in Kananaskis Country that lies up against the southern Alberta Rockies.
If your not familiar with Summits On The Air (SOTA) it is an amateur radio operating award program launched in Great Britain in 2002, which is now known world wide.
SOTA's aim is to encourage amateur radio operators to operate temporarily from mountainous locations, combining hiking and mountain climbing with operating their amateur radio station from the summits of hills and mountains.
Those who set up a station on a summit as Ken and Lewis would be doing are known as activators, and those who contact activators as I'm doing in this photo are known as chasers.
Points are awarded to the activator for operating from a summit, and to each chaser contacting the activator. The higher the mountain is, the more points the activator and the chaser receive.
Now back to Ken and Lewis who successfully activated the summit from Square Butte, and were successful in making numerous contacts on 146.520 MHz as well as on 17 and 20 meters both locally, and also one or both of them were successful in making summit to summit HF contacts.
I was able to work both Lewis and Ken while on the 2 meter band and also on the HF bands of 17 and 20 meters. Normally I could have worked them from the comforts of my mobile utilizing the radio stack mounted there.
However on this day, I opted to use my manpack that has an all band all mode Yaesu FT-897D mounted in place. The reason for this was because Lewis planned on working 144.200 MHz SSB, and the Kenwood TS-480HX mounted in the radio stack of my mobile does not have the capability to work 2 meter sideband.
With my manpack set up on the tailgate of my mobile, I had a number of antennas at my disposal, including the 10-80 meter gearmotor antenna that resides on my mobile, and is quickly connected up to the FT-897D as it was in this photo on this day.
All in all it was a successful activation of the summit of Square Butte for both Lewis and Ken as activators, as well as myself as one of the chasers that worked them.
Good job guys.
Expand the photo for a closer look.....
