A Purpose To Get On The Air

I don’t want a lot however I do want a cause to get on the air. This may take many varieties as I wrote in this weblog submit a while in the past. I see fairly just a few new hams fighting the issue of “I bought this license however now what?”

Working objectives or awards are a enjoyable technique to preserve centered on carrying out one thing by way of ham radio. Actually, it’s a selected cause to get on the air and make radio contacts. I’m not huge on idle chit chat by way of the radio (“the climate right here is 65 deg and raining”) so having a cause to make contacts helps me get on the air. I’ve tended to pursue awards in a serial method…as soon as I hit some degree of accomplishment, I normally declare victory and transfer on to one thing else.

Approach again within the wayback machine, the primary award I pursued was Labored All States (WAS). It does take some effort however I used to be fairly lively on the HF bands on the time, so most of the states simply confirmed up in my log. However to actually drive it residence, I stored monitor of which states I nonetheless wanted and actively seemed for alternatives to work them. Later, I pursued Labored All Continents (WAC), which clearly requires working some DX. However then I made a decision that if I had any DX cred in any respect, I wanted to get DX Century Membership (DXCC). Just lately, the recognition of FT8 has been a sport changer and I at the moment have about 175 entities confirmed (thanks, Logbook of The World). I don’t chase paper QSL playing cards anymore, which is simply an excessive amount of bother for a Slacker DXer™.

The VHF and better bands have all the time been a ardour for me, so I pursued the VHF/UHF Century Membership (VUCC) awards. First, it was 6 meter VUCC, the simplest one to get. A extremely good run throughout the ARRL June VHF contest can produce the 100 grids you want for the award in a single weekend. Later, some mountaintop exercise resulted in 10 GHz VUCC. At one level, I bought into working the LEO satellites and confirmed the required 100 grids for satellite tv for pc VUCC. (Hey, Technicians, that is one thing you are able to do proper now!) I nonetheless don’t have very many grids confirmed on 2 meters, in order that one continues to be calling to me.

Summits On The Air

In case you learn my weblog, you already know that Summits On The Air (SOTA) is my primary exercise recently, each activating and chasing summits. It is a pure match for me as I’ve loved mountaintop working in varied varieties, totally on VHF and UHF. (See my SOTA weblog postings.) My mountaineering companion and spouse, Joyce/K0JJW is nearly all the time activating with me. Her #1 ham radio exercise can be SOTA. We each achieved Mountain Goat standing (1000 activator factors) utilizing solely VHF and better frequencies. (Technicians can have a variety of enjoyable with SOTA on VHF!)

The SOTA program has all kinds of awards, supported by a complete database used to file SOTA radio contacts and preserve monitor of the scores. It’s not actually a contest however there’s pleasant rivalry between SOTA fans as they monitor one another’s posted scores. Listed below are the “badges” that pop up once I test my SOTA data.

Parks On The Air

Prior to now few years, we now have added the Parks On The Air (POTA) program. It seems that not all areas of the nation have fascinating SOTA summits however all of them have state or nationwide parks. This suits properly into our outside mountaineering/tenting/4WD actions.

Lots of our SOTA activations are in parks (nationwide forests, nationwide parks and state parks), so we normally attempt to make the SOTA activation depend for each packages. Which means a lot of our POTA activations are achieved utilizing VHF/UHF solely, if from a summit. Extra generally, we use the HF bands for POTA activations. Our normal POTA setup is a Yaesu FT-991 driving an endfed wire antenna, normally on SSB or FT8.

POTA additionally has an ideal database, good instruments and loads of awards obtainable. Right here’s what exhibits up on my POTA awards web page. Similar to SOTA, POTA will not be a contest however it’s fascinating to see what different hams are doing and examine you degree of exercise.

So these are my ideas.
What motivates you to get on the air?

73, Bob K0NR