Covid-19.  It's awful being cooped up and not being able to hang out with friends.  But one nice outcome of the pandemic is I've had lots of time to resurrect an old hobby, Ham Radio.  I've owned my house since 1995 and never really took the time to put HF antennas on the roof until now.  Wow things have changed.

So I stumbled across a new part of the hobby recently, called SOTA or Summit on the Air.  This is where a ham operator goes to the top of a summit of a mountain (in some states they might be called "hills") and "activates" the peak by making contacts with a portable radio setup.  Other radio operators, called "chasers", sit in the comfort of their home and try to make contact with you.  Then, activators of other peaks throughout the world try to communicate with you in a "Summit to Summit" conversation.

I used to love to hike (I say "used to" because I haven't done any for quite some time), and I love ham radio, so this seemed like a great new way to get exercise and practice radio at the same time.  You can get points for activating summits, and lots of points for Summit to Summit.  I'm not terribly interested in competing with others, but I do enjoy goals.  So reaching certain point levels would provide natural motivation.

So, I hope to use this blog to document my journey, which may provide even more motivation to get out there and hike to the tops of mountains.  California has a lot of them.

Rick

W5RJD


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