Category: Uncategorized
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Activation Report: W7O/CE-068 Pine Benchmark – Thanksgiving Day 2022
After a successful RF high experience on Lava Butte the day prior, the weather looked stable and warm so KK7HJL and I decided to bag another of our local summits. Pine Mountain is about 25 miles SE of Bend on US Highway 20, then another 5-6 miles on a good gravel road, though in…
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Activation Report: W7O/CE-188 – Lava Butte
We haven’t been terribly active on the air of late. Only one activation since August, so we (KK7HJL and I) decided to take a couple hours on Thanksgiving Eve to hike up Lava Butte to activate. While the park is “closed” they do leave the gate to the parking lot open to allow folks to…
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PNW Campout Report
On the weekend of July 8-11, SOTA activators from California, Oregon and Washington gathered at Hyatt Lake campground in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument near Ashland, OR. Amy Hamptonstall (AG7GP) and her partner Robin (N7HAP) organized the gathering as a way for SOTA operators to get together and activate lots of summits with plenty of Summit…
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Activation Report: W6/CC-068 – Silver Peak
My wife, KK7HJL, is on a mission. She wants me to experience all the cool places she had lived before we met. To that end we have spent summers in Minnesota on her childhood lake, visited Leadville, CO and last Thanksgiving took our first trip to Catalina Island, off the Southern California coast. During our first…
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2022 Central Oregon Summit to Summit Party
S2S Ops at Worthy Brewing It all started in July at the W7O SOTA Campout hosted by Amy AG7GP down at the beautiful Hyatt Lake Recreation Area in Southern Oregon. It was my first gathering of ham minded folks and I was looking forward to meeting and chatting with other operators, being a relatively new…
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Activation Report : Horse Ridge – W7O/CE-176
I wasn’t sure if I was going to get out to activate this weekend due to the rain in the forecast but things cleared up and it began to warm up so I decided to check out the Horse Ridge activation. I’ve ridden mountain bikes in the area quite a bit but mostly on the…
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Activation Report: Pistol Butte W7O/CM-091 : First CW SOTA Activation
After an aggravating day at the J O B, I decided on an impromptu SOTA attempt with my newly built Penntek TR-35. I spent part of my morning building a Google map of an area near Sunriver, OR for a future Moto-SOTA adventure. Most of the summits in the area are drive/ride-ups but there are…
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Penntek TR-35 4 Band CW Transceiver – First Transceiver Build
WA3RNC Penntek TR-35 4 Band, 5 Watt Transceiver One of the things that drew me to amateur radio is the kit building aspect. Only weeks into the hobby, and before I had my hands on an HF rig I was ordering parts for an End fed random wire build I found on the AARL site. The…
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K6ARK End Fed Half Wave (EFHW) build and test
I watched a video on the Ham Radio Crash Course about this very tiny and relatively easy-to-build antenna a few months ago and bought one right away from Amazon. It only took about 30 minutes start to finish, the hardest part being attaching the surface mount capacitor as the video describes. I have since use…
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FT8: Why I started my DX'ing with FT8
Why did I start my HF journey with FT8? As a new ham there are a lot of options to choose from when getting on the air, so many that it can be overwhelming. Initially, I wasn’t that interested in digital modes, however running a low power rig (Icom-705) limits ones ability to make contacts.…
W7MTB: Amateur Radio Notes 