Every year, I spent a lot of time driving through New Jersey, but this year I thought I would stop there. As usual, I spent a while mapping out the sites before the trip. For the sake of efficiency,...

I was in the Washington, DC area for a day, and couldn’t resist activating Sugarloaf Mountain — it is just too convenient a SOTA peak to ignore. Everytime I’m in the area, I think about going up it, but often...

Le Pic Pelé was the third SOTA summit that I visited on April 23rd, after Les Cornes d’Urfé and Pierre Beille earlier in the day. From aerial photos, I could see that there are at least two paths that wind...

To find this peak, I went with the summit coordinates provided on the SOTA site and looked on GoogleMaps for the nearest road. The road I found runs to the east of the peak and is unnamed. It was a...

As mentioned, I had a day and a half to explore the area around Lyon, beginning Saturday afternoon with Le Grand Felletin. I got up early on Sunday and pointed the rental car westward to a cluster of unactivated sites,...

I was in Lyon, France for a conference and had late Saturday and all of Sunday to devote to SOTA activity. During a 24-hour period, I activated four previously unactivated peaks in the Massif Central region. By the time I...

For a change, I have stayed put in Madagascar for a few weeks in a row, and on the weekends, I have taken part in a few contests: the PODXS 070 Club’s 31 Flavors digital contest, and two CW contests: JIDX...

Being in a remote location with limited infrastructure and occasional disasters of various flavors, I thought it would be a good idea to have some options to get email on and off the island without relying on local communication providers. There...

On my second day in Barcelona, I had to choose between activating an historic two-point peak, Sant Jeroni (EA3/BC-012) or trying one of the four one-point peaks along the coast to the northeast of Barcelona, EA3/BC-015, 16, 17,  and 18....

Before arriving in Barcelona, I spent some time looking over SOTA maps and came to the conclusion that none of the peaks were within a reasonable trip by public transportation, but that quite a few are within an hour and...

This storm is already intense and predicted to hit the north-east side of the island tomorrow morning with hurricane force. For the last three years, we have been lucky with storms tracking to one side or the other of the...

Over the last two weeks, I have traveled in South Africa and Botswana, primarily on business, but with a little time set aside for radio fun. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive regulatory clearance to operate in Botswana in time for the trip, so...

Conditions over the previous week have been good, so I decided to put in an effort on the ARRL INT DX CW contest this weekend. I knew from experience that I would not be able to work around the clock...

I have a few days of meetings in Paris before returning to Madagascar and before arriving, I mapped out a couple SOTA peaks near Paris. I was not sure when I would work them in since my only free time...

I’m still in the Los Angeles area, and today activated another nearby hill. I know that this site is very close to W6/CT-225, Flint Peak, which I visited a couple days ago, and I have seen reports from others who have...

While visiting some friends in the Los Angeles area, I had an afternoon free, so I visited one of the many SOTA peaks within a short drive of their house: Flint Peak.   According to Google Maps, there is a...

Once again, I find myself in San Francisco for some meetings and have a down day to tackle a SOTA peak. In planning this trip, I noted that no matter how many SOTA peaks I activate near San Francisco, I...

  A couple days after activating OK/JC-038, my family spent a day in Kutna Hora, a town with a lot of history and great architecture. The nearby Sedlec Ossuary is also a tourist attraction. On the way back to Prague,...

My family and spent the holidays in the Czech Republic this year. We enjoyed a few days in Prague, had a nice visit to Cesky Kromlov, and spent New Year’s in the Lipno ski area. What better way to start...

Lately, I’ve been hearing a good deal of voice in the CW portion of 20m and 40m. I’ve already made some mental adjustment to being in Region 1, where the band plan allows for voice operation below 7.1Mhz on 40m,...

I had to slip a quick personal trip to the UK in my December schedule and noticed that the best round trip fare was on Turkish Airlines via Istanbul. It is not the fastest way to go, with a stop...

I had planned an early start today, but not surprisingly didn’t feel functional until around noon (US election results kept me up all night). It was flurrying when I went out – light, fluffy, flaky snow drifting down. A light...

Conditions were up and down over the weekend, but not so bad as I had expected. At times, I could hear, but not be heard with 100W, so again a bit more power would have been helpful. I was probably...

I should be able to put CQ zone 39 back on the air this weekend, at least for part of the CQ WW SSB contest. I’ve had a ton of travel and a few other projects over the last few...

It’s been a few years since Ben Collins-Sussman and I put out a text adventure game, but we were inspired this summer by the painful rollout of Pokémon Go! to write a new one for entry in this year’s Interactive...