‘Summits on the Air’ is a great way to operate an amateur radio station in a portable environment. In Ireland there are plenty of summits, of varying difficulty, to choose from. And you will nearly always manage to make contacts, especially if you can spot yourself on the sotawatch cluster, as people around the world […]
I use lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO 4) batteries for my Summit On The Air Activations, any any time I’m operating portable really with my Yaesu FT-817 or FT-897D. They give reliable power for a long period of time and crucially for me – don’t tend to explode as much as LiPo batteries! (search youtube for
Another SOTA catchup post from last year! For the 40m counties contest in May I decided to go up Tonlagee. There is a steep but short route up to it from the ESB car park and since the weather was nice I decided to stay overnight. Weather for the contest was good, but the propagation
I did my first SOTA activation on Lug in September for the 2m/70cm IRTS contest. I won the 2m contest and did well in the 70cm considering I just had a Baofeng handheld. However Lug is windy. It’s the highest summit in the East of Ireland and it was a particularly windy and occasionally wet