Episode: 3513
Title: HPR3513: HB9HNT and PA7KEN on SOTA, Summits on the Air
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3513/hpr3513.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 00:48:52

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3513 for Wednesday the 19th of January 2022.
Today's show is entitled, H.D.I.H.N.D. and R7 Kenon Sota, Summit Sunday Air, it is hosted
by Vinny and is about 43 minutes long and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, Summit Sunday Air is the combination of mountains, climbing, and amateur radio.
Welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio. That's an episode which is part of the
series on Ham Radio and I'm Benny or H.B.9, H.N.T or Hotel Bravo 9, Hotel November
Tango and with me is Ken and since you've got two call signs, I won't mention your call
sign and let you introduce yourself. I'll go with PS7 Kenon K.E. and I am here
to assist you recording the show.
That's perfect. Great. Thank you. So and the thing we're going to talk about is Sota,
which is short for summits on the air, which is basically a form to play Ham Radio and of
course, of course, when you talk about summits and and mountains, then what do you do?
You get someone who lives in the Netherlands to to talk to you and ask the questions because
they've got no clue. Is this correct, Ken? It's it's completely. First of all, what is
a mountain? Okay, but I actually I looked up whether I mean to play summits on the air,
the first thing you need you and got this correct, you need summits and I looked up whether
there are so when you say summits on the air, I thought that was like a you know, so much where
there's like a meeting, so much of view of visors or something, but you actually mean the tops of
mountains. Yes, exactly. And even actually even hills qualify, I looked up whether you you have
any any mountains or hills that qualify in in the Netherlands and actually there are two summits
you can do to play Sota in in the Netherlands. One is on ramp to the A1.
All I did is look up the the Sota reference, I didn't look up the names because the names were
in Dutch and I'm not very good at Dutch. No problem, I once I once joked with my brother
admittedly we had a few points at the time that when Dutch people leave the Netherlands you know
there's they they get altitude sickness and they have they have oxygen tanks on the side of
the roads when they go up they're on ramp to a motorway. I mean like other people other people
use oxygen tanks when they go to low sea level and people from the Netherlands use oxygen tank when
they go above sea level. It is the fence, it's like we have many parts. It was after lockdown,
it's okay, fair enough. Okay, so some of the air, so what's what's the steel?
You basically do ham radio from the top of the mountain, is it?
Climb the mountain and make contacts. Start the plan. Exactly, it's exactly the point. You
bring your your equipment in your backpack or whatever and climb a mountain and then set up your
equipment and make connections. But you don't have the connections, don't have to be to someone
who's also an amount on the top because this would be a bothersome. So they're basically I'll get
I'll get into the details right away a little bit. There are basically two times to play
Sota and you can do both. For example, today I was I wasn't very well, so I didn't climb a mountain,
so I was a chaser and they're so-called activators and they're so-called chasers. An activator is
the person who actually climbs a mountain and tries to contact someone from from the mountain top.
And a chaser is someone who sits at home or wherever brings his hand radio to walk or something
and answers answers to call. They're called exactly. Yeah.
And that's basically about all all you do.
There are different you can use different modes to do this. A lot of the smaller mountain peaks are
done on the on the two meters and 70 centimeters span over FM frequency modulation.
But you can also bring a whole short wave station to the mountain top. They're quite small short
wave stations designed for this and do a single sideband or you can you can even do CW which is
which is Morse code. Or you could do one of the of the modern digital ways to communicate
which would be like something like FT8. Well, but it's not very popular to do this but some people
because you need of course you also need a computer and you also have to get a computer.
There are some people like to do this because they don't like to speak another language than what
they would speak on VHF or UHF. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Very good. So can you tell me some of the history
about you please? Yes. I think the idea of of summits in the air was was quite old. It
existed a couple of years before someone actually and I forgot all the names and I forgot the
write them down but I think that's boring anyway. You can look them up on on the website I'll post
in your show notes but the idea existed a couple of years before it was actually launched on the
2nd of March 2002 in England and Wales and Scotland followed followed soon after not too long
and it was interestingly it was from the beginning designed to be a form of ham radio
game or whatever you want to call this that was based on the internet. So there was always
it was always based on a database where you would enter your entries, your activator entries or
your chaser entries. It was always based on the database of mountains or mountain peaks that
qualify well we'll get to this later so what mountain peak qualified and sometimes it even
feels that the playing will also get to this later but the playing feels a bit like cheating because
sometimes you get to a mountain peak and if you get a cell signal on the mountain peak and
internet access you can basically tell everyone in the world over the internet that you're on this
mountain peak and this is this frequency and they know coming up here. Yeah exactly they even you
can even install an app on your phone and you will get a ping that's what happened to me twice
today. I got the ping well there is someone on a summit close to me so I just
switched the correct frequency and talk to them so it was never it was never basically a ham radio
only a mode of communication it always depended on dependent on the internet. Yeah okay.
Yeah, that's not cool. So what are the rules? Because there has to be rules.
Yes there are rules. I mean first you have to basically know what a
so-to summit is or you have to define whether a summit you can't just you can't just go to any
summit that's on the map and so well I'm here I'm playing so there are special
summits that qualify and they have to have a 150 meters prominence which means it has basically
around around the mountain it has to go down for 150 meters 360 degrees otherwise it doesn't
it doesn't count so if you're on a mountain peak and it goes down like 50 meters and then the next
peak starts and the next one is the next one is higher than the one you're on the one you're on
doesn't count. Right. I remember seeing something about this so presumably this is in a
database somewhere is it? Yes and and and now nowadays basically to be to be able to
participate in SOTA in a country you have to have a local association for SOTA for the country
this association is in charge of defining what peaks are SOTA peaks and what peaks are not
SOTA peaks and of course sometimes this changes because the data this is based on is sometimes not
as accurate and at the time more accurate data becomes available people realize that well this peak
was qualified as a SOTA peak but isn't qualified anymore so it's removed and of course the other way
around so and this associations they also define regions in the country and design numbers for the
peaks so basically every SOTA peak has a SOTA reference which is the country association which
would be HP or hotel bravo in the case of Switzerland or PA in your case yeah and then there is a
slash and then there is the region which in Switzerland is the code for the Canton which is for
example SZ in my case in my area or whatever Canton basically the same the same letters we put on
on the car plate yeah yeah and then there is a dash in the number and interestingly in in
the Netherlands there is only one region and it's also called PA so yeah it's a surprise there
I think it's a surprise there yeah yeah we're flasks Robert it by the way exactly well but I mean
you can you can still get chaser points from from the Netherlands on on Georgia because
short-wave travels quite a distance yeah and usually that's also the reference you give if you
if you make contact with someone you you give this of course you usually also give the name of the
peak because people are more use names than to to this reference but you also give the reference
because that's what you need to enter a contact in the database I can you do this without
entering a contact in the database so just at home when I happen to accidentally pick this up
with us annoying people and no absolutely not because for you to get chaser points you have to
enter your contacts in the chaser part of the database and to get activators point you have
points you have to enter the contact in the activator part of the database and as far as I see
those are more or less unconnected so you get you get your activator points no matter what
all you need is is a valid contact maybe we can maybe you can
mention right away what the valid contact means I mean they're not no strict rules basically
of course the contact has to go in both directions so if I just here if I just hear someone on
the radio and they don't hear me it doesn't count and that's so under the general rules you have
simplex direct QSOs are using a satellite can you go through each of those oh yeah yeah I
a QSO is basically just for for anyone who just didn't do the ham license QSO is basically
just the jargon for for a connection so when we say we do a QSO on the mountain that's basically
which is contacted someone no matter what mode we use and can't just go how's it going there if
there's a there's a you have to give your call sign they have to give their call sign location
and whatever you have to give well the rules don't explicitly specify that you have to give
your call sign but they specify you have to keep to the rules of ham radio in a country
which in most countries means you have to give your call sign yeah and your your connection has to
has to be either a direct connection meaning from from radio to radio without a without a
a teacher or something repeater in the middle yeah because there are there repeaters
on mountain peaks which make it would make this a lot easier but yeah because it's hard to
because it's hard to reach a satellite it's basically restricted to terrestrial
terrestrial repeaters you're allowed to do a contact over a satellite because this that's
even more difficult than than a direct contact yeah and by simplex you mean what
simplex basically means just a direct connection means simplex means on the same you send and
you send and receive on the same frequency which is some free you you usually do when you contact
someone on on their personal radio when you contact someone on over a repeater you use a different
transmit and receive yeah it's up or satellite you're going to have two different frequencies
there by definition okay how do you mean how is how is it different for for satellites oh they're
gonna have a send and receive frequency so yeah so but that's the same like that's just the nature
of satellites yeah but that's with every every repeater yeah because it wouldn't work otherwise
coolio yeah and you have a section here for points so presumably you just don't want to climb
a mountain for no reason so you get points for going up in the summit yes exactly and I think
I think I skipped one thing one we talked about what's a valid connection there is one thing apart
from just giving your call sign there is one thing that's well it's not a required but it's
customary to give someone a a signal report how how you you get your there how you get their signal
what the quality of their signal basically and there's two numbers one number is how well you're
able to understand them which is between one and five five is perfectly clear and one is
you don't understand the word you just get like white noise of course a one is not something you can
realistically give someone as the first number and the second number is the s level from
yeah from the radio a s that's basically per s level that's six six decibel I think yeah and usually
usually the radio just shows you a number between one and nine and that's the second number you
gift them so they know how well they get to you and how well and you know how well you get to them
yeah yeah okay and you're more usually here people talk about five and nine your signals five and
nine uh yes exactly that's the next one for you mostly here yeah somebody wants to do a show on
this particular segment it's the signal quality thing is is a show in it's is a question on
itself on the harrick exam and then cw has a next row on which is so five nine and then one to nine
for tone is it or is it one to five and not sure I'll research that before to do that show
okay yeah I've got no comfort yeah it's but the third number is someone something I don't usually
use because I don't speak cv or cw yet I'm not sure whether this is something I'm I'm going to learn
I mean well maybe at some point maybe yes okay so what is an activator I think we already
mentioned what an activator is in the beginning but we didn't mention that you why you would even do
this I mean of course I do this because it's fun you don't get anything else then except for
the fun of it and you get points you can do nothing with the points except get awards and you can
do nothing with the award exactly yes exactly yeah and basically to be an activator what we didn't
mention yet is there are some some more more precise rules how you get have to get to the top
of the peak one thing is you have to use either a non motorized bike a animal transport or walk up
there at least a non motorized bike yes any and basically any non motorized transport counts
I mean an animal doesn't count this motorized I'm about if you're a mobility thingy
if you have mobility issues then are there exceptions for that I didn't see any but honestly
I'm not sure whether in this case it's a lot of fun to be a a activator in the south okay I think
you would rather go because a lot of modifies wheelchairs that are built as tanks that would be
awesome like on a four by four or something going up yeah that's yeah that's more than the assumption
if you're doing this nobody's going to check it yeah but it's it's an interesting question honestly
I mean there are there are man there are man peaks that are perfectly reachable in an electric
wheelchair and let your weather discount it doesn't it doesn't in the rule it explicitly mentions
non motorized bike but it doesn't specify whether a wheelchair would be allowed or not a motorized one
yeah okay the second the second thing is you have to bring your power source with you
and I think the power source is also not allowed to be motorized so it has to be a battery not
not a generator and it can't be it can't be a power source that's already available on the peak
so you have to bring your your equipment and your own your own yeah basically you have to be
you have to be the mobile yeah yes also this are a bit a bit hardcore physical I'm feeling
this is this is actually just to get fit regime tidied up into him radio or something I mean to be
honest it specifies you have to walk the last part to the mountain top it doesn't specify how long
this last part has to be I mean there are mountain tops in Switzerland where you can where you can
take a cable car basically next to the peak and then walk like 25 meters over to the peak and
you're you're done right yeah I think a lot of this still might be yes let's call a cheating
well I think it's it's officially allowed to use a cable car or whatever mode of transport there is
to get to the to the peak you only have to walk the last couple of meters and this is this is
perfectly fine yeah and then to to make the QSO you don't have to stand exactly on on the peak on
the highest point you have but you can't be more than 25 meters below the highest point so there
is on every summit there is an activation zone that's the zone that's like within 25 meters of
altitude of the summit and that's especially relevant if you want to do this on a peak where
on the highest point there is a antenna for something whatever that that disturbs your signal
right yeah that cannot be the case yeah exactly so you want to walk away from from this a couple of
meters yeah and then when you're up there you start making contacts right and the first when you do
the first contact the mountain counts or the summit counts as activated yeah this is you won't get
any points for this but that's relevant if you climb a mountain that has never never been activated
before so you get to be the first activator and you get your on the list as the first person who
activated this summit apart from this I don't see how it's relevant to do just one one connection
and to get points you have to do four QSOs from the summit and right okay
if you do four QSOs you get a certain amount of points for a summit which depends on the altitude of
the summit so the higher the mountain to resumably the harder to climb and the more points you get
and there is also special bonus between November and someone in spring a winter bonus of three points
the points for your summits are in the northern hemisphere and can only imagine yep well you only
get the winter bonus if the summit is higher than 100 at 1,500 meters so you won't get the winter
bonus in the Netherlands I guess now that I think this whole thing is against Netherlands to be
honest yeah I'm not sure because it's actually it's actually very hard to be a chaser in my area
because I'm surrounded by mountains and I get I get a lot of contacts from for mountain peaks with
people that live even even even at the moment I only do this on on the two meter and 70 centimeter
band because I'm not equipped for for a short wave and I even get contacts from from
Germany and the flat apart of Switzerland but here here I basically only get two
the mountains sets around me or across the lake or something so yeah okay yeah it depends
which side you are yeah exactly of course to be an activator it's against the Netherlands but
I would expect it's easier to be a chaser in the Netherlands than than around here
yeah okay so we were talking about chasers and chasers basically get the same amount of points
that an activator gets for four days for the peak but it's it's it's basically
so the person has to carry everything up yeah but it's a separate account separate it's counted
separately so you get chaser points and you get activator points and when you get to 1000 that's
one of the global or global awards you can get when you get to 1000 activator points you get a mountain
goat for every you you can also get the second mount a real mountain goat and no it's just
okay I'm very disappointed yeah of course and there are also other local awards for example in
Switzerland there is a award for for a certain amount of countings if you did like two peaks in
I don't remember six ten countings then you get you cannot get an award and there is also a
chaser award a global one for 1000 points which is called a Shaq's sloth so very different from
being a mountain goat okay okay yeah so I think we've already covered a lot of chasers or
anything else you want to say about that no there is another hell of love to say about chasers
because all they do is sit in their homes of course as a chaser it's useful to have a more powerful
antenna it not necessary yeah and also a more powerful station to send because then you get
further and the people on on the mountain top usually have like small antennas and small hand
radios so you have to make up for for this I'm what do yagi help
should you know because you know where the mountain is huh if you yeah through through you see you see them
if you see the the spot on the internet you see the post on the internet where the person is you
can turn your yagi towards this mountain and what the imagine this should help yes cool
so you convince me I want to do this yes nothing would give me greater joy then climbing up a mountain
of the cold looking radios and batteries what do I need okay first of all you move to
different country okay no just joking I got a subscription to your local cable car
exactly get a trolley yep no basically the first thing you need is you need accounts for
for soda watch which is a platform around by the British Association that that's basically the
the global organization sorry the ones who come up with us yeah
sorry they're the ones who invented this oh yeah exactly yes yes and I'm not sure whether they're
the same people still but they're definitely the same organization and soda watches basically the
platform where you post whether you plant there are two different things you can do you can either
post that you plan to go to a peak at the certain day or you can post that right now I'm on this
peak that's that's called a spot yeah yeah and the the original idea basically the original idea
of a spot was not that you go to a mountain because in 2002 there was no there was no mobile internet
to post something from the top of the mountain right so the basic the basic idea is that the first
person who who who who heard you on the airwaves basically went to his computer at home and did
the spot so is this only men or can we have women and other people I think we can have we can allow
we can allow women but it's sadly sadly it's very uncommon and whenever whenever there is a
woman no not whenever but usually when you hear a woman on a on a peak then she's up there with
her husband or partner it's well it's sad but that's the way it is yes and we we will endeavor
to rectify this through our series of HBR because most of the HBR listeners are female correct
they're gender neutral as we all know oh yeah okay okay we don't ask yeah
okay so where did I start yeah the original idea for spot was that someone else
posts this spot on the internet because they heard you on on the airwaves and on the radio on a
certain frequency right and nowadays you can of course do this yourself because you get internet
access on on the mountain top there is also way to do a spot by a short SMS short message on
on the phone there are gateways that yeah transfer the message and the more interesting one
is there there are radios where you can also turn to mid spot using APRS APRS is
short sorry go ahead or it's short for automated package reporting system which is a way to
report a digital package from your from your radio it's usually used to transmit your TBS
coordinates that's that's why a lot of people assume that it's called automated position reporting
system but it's actually automated package reporting and you can the package can contain
anything it can be a personal message to someone or there are gateways and it can be a
sort of spot where you just transmit well I'm there and there in this peak of course you don't
get the confirmation whether you reached whether your your spot actually reached the internet
right yeah okay yeah and if you've got your account on sort of watch it's basically single sign on
you also get an account for so the data that's the other part that's a database where you
enter your QSOs either chaser QSO or the activator QSO by the way there is a third type of QSO
which also there is a separate list of points for this and that's a summit to summit QSO
that's a QSO where you are actually chaser and the activator because you're on a different summit
than the person you're you're talking to and that's fun because then you know the other person
you're talking to is in another mountain peak and you're here then you can talk about what's
a by their like over there what's what's this no whatever
oh that sounds cool yeah that I quite like this when I first the first time I did a SOTA
activation I actually had the summit to summit contact and this was it was kind of interesting
I quite enjoyed talking to someone on another summit close by yeah well then of course you need
you need a a or several radios usually people who also activate in short way if you
usually bring two radios one a short way for radio most of the activations are done
and the 20 meters and 40 meters span and of course some people just bring a small antenna like one of
those those um well the one the ones you just screw on top of the on top of the radio and
yeah okay yeah even for short ways and some people bring like a huge equipment with poles and
some people carry yogis on top of the mountain so everything everything can be can be done
and you also then of course you also bring a you have the UHF VHF um radio
just because usually the count the people in the area are easily contacted on this one yeah
and you can also use this one to though do an APRS spot and you can just use it for example
also as a backup I mean if you're if you're short wife um station doesn't work you still get your
your small handheld radio and you can still get four qs on top yeah you you won't get like
20 30 40 contacts I mean some people do this they just go to a mountain top and spend like hours
up there uh talking to people and come back with like 40 contacts 40 QsOs but you won't do this just
um on the two meter and 70 centimeters spend so there's no difference between whether you're talking
the bob done on the car park are you talking to Jan the other side of the world the contact is
the contact uh contact is a contact as long as it's not over a repeater terrestrial
yes yes yes then yeah absolutely so I mean of course it's more interesting to talk to someone
on the other end the world than than to just someone close by but that's something I still
have to experience because those I mean it's not exactly a hobby that's cheap because a
ratios are either expensive or heavy right and for for the mountain peak you don't want
the heavy ones and battery batteries is exactly the same you you don't want to carry a lead acid
battery up the mountain you want some small light and expensive so you can you can spend a lot
of money on playing this of course you can also just get a cheap handheld secondhand handheld
radio and do everything on two meters and 70 centimeters yeah I mean some some mountain peaks
especially within the Alps don't work that way because you're you're you're so you're surrounded
by other peaks there is no way to get out on on those bands but for example around here where I
live most peaks work also on the two meters and 70 centimeters span yeah okay clear excellent
so is there anything I didn't cover so what's a spot idea who wants to who wants to start this so
do you have everything you need except the the right country well the right country the body
the desire to do this this would be my personal idea of hell have just slug up a mountain
but oddly enough there are people I know who do enjoy sport and I can definitely see that
this has been something that would push all their sporty buttons as well as their
technical hoppy buttons as well so this again why do you get into
into amateur radio is you know could very well be for this how cool would it be yeah I mean
well I didn't get into amateur radio for this why I got into amateur radio you have to listen to
the other episode kind of yes but I mean I'm I've been a mountaineer for years I love
climbing mountains I love walking up mountains on my skis and if you're if you do this and you do
an amateur amateur radio license that's so nice definitely something you want to want to try
because it's it's absolutely fun to combine those two hobbies and it's absolutely fun to
annoy all your friends because now you have to spend like not only 10 minutes on the peak to
eat a sandwich you have to spend like one hour on the peak to make contact of course obvious
of it no I've I've brought some friends with me and they had to wait until I had my four
QSOs but they they didn't mind yet my very good my started some point there
no that's that that was actually quite cool because I had kind of heard about this in passing but
I'd never met somebody who was into it so yeah cool well if anyone has any questions you can
add them to the comments of the show I guess yeah absolutely I mean I that I think there are two
ways to ask questions in HPR either or or make comments either you comment on the show or you
record a follow-up show for the same you should do and I just I just said this that Ken doesn't
have to because usually he's the one saying this absolutely brilliant thank you very much
for inviting me along on this and I'm more than happy to do it in the future great and thank you
for for coming along and co-hosting this show and and talking to me and asking some of the questions
it's it's always easier to talk to the person definitely to yourself okay thank you
definitely do you want to do the traditional children tomorrow thing I think you have to do this
because I don't remember every part of contractually it's a tradition children's mother tomorrow
for another exciting episode of hacker public radio
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