Queens of the Mountain

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ever hear about Queens of the Mountain event?
Well then, you're going to wantto tighten your shoulder packs,
refill that water bottle andcheck your boots.
Next, on Live Free in Ham.
Hello and welcome to Live Freein Ham podcast.
This is our weekly show wherewe discuss ham radio topics in
New Hampshire, new England andbeyond.
We're thrilled to have you here, as always, and we appreciate
you if you've been a regularlistener or maybe this is your

(00:21):
first time tuning in and thanksagain for joining us for
tonight's episode.
So let's get in the show.
I'm your host, call sign EricN1JUR, and I'm with my co-host,
todd W1STJ, and we have twospecial guests tonight.
You guys can decide who goesfirst Amy.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
And my name is Paula canine.
Irascible rat skeleton.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Very cool Way to break phonetics there.
You're going to have a bunch ofangry lids there going nuts,
all right, well, anyway, good tohear you, good to have you guys
on we are super excited to talkabout tonight.
So we're going to get into alittle soda, but before we do
that, let's get into our usualstuff we do, uh, as always, you
can head over our storefront atlivefreeandhamcom forward slash

(01:11):
shop, check out all our merch,pick up a bacon pack of our
hammies, um, and you know we'realways adding new stuff to the
store, so make sure you headover there and check that stuff
out, um, so you don't miss outon any some of the latest swag.
As always, you can head overand connect with our community
and do that a number of ways.
Obviously, the easiest way isour live stream.

(01:31):
Every month we get to livestream.
So make sure, if you haven'talready, head over to our
YouTube channel and make sureyou become a subscriber and
click that bell so you getnotified when we do go live,
because sometimes we don't evenknow when we're going live, so
surprise to all of us.
So make sure you don't miss outon the fun in action.
Um, and as uh, you know, thereare many ways you can get a hold

(01:53):
of us.
Uh, as we've said in the pastthat you can get in touch with
us via v email or sms, or youcan always do the favorite uh
mode is uh, leave us a voicemailat 978-233-1142.
Um, and, as always, all thoselinks are in the show notes, um,
so make sure you click on oneof those.
And, as we've said in the past,you know, uh, and it's been

(02:14):
pretty effective that you knowstop what you're doing right now
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If you feel compelled to leavea voicemail, put this, uh, you
know, this little episode onpause.
Dial that number and leave us anote and we'll make sure we
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So you know, with that, you canalways help support our show too
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(02:35):
Patreon members get a ton offree stuff.
They get access to our earlyshow releases as well as our
uncut and unedited episodes.
And, as Bob Koff says and I amnot cued for him tonight oh my
gosh, this is sad, all right,well, I am off.
Off.
Here we go, there we go.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
You can join for as little as $3 a month.
It's not a big expense.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yep, See, we can't forget about Bob there.
Bob is one of our Patreonsubscribers and he's a great
supporter of the show and, likehe says, for $3 a month you can
easily join and get a wholebunch of stuff and be part of
the Liffrey Hamm community there.
All right, so we are one guesthost short tonight.

(03:19):
I assume Paul is sailing thefriendly skies at this moment.
He may join us a little later,hopefully, so we'll see where it
goes from there.
So we are going to changethings up a little bit because
we've changed platforms here alittle bit, so we don't have all
of our segments plugged in.
But for tonight we actuallyhave something for our mailbag.
So go ahead, Todd, pick up themailbag there.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
All right.
So we got an email and it sayshey y'all, great show.
I enjoy listening when I havetime.
Keep up the good work.
Poto on brothers KJ5CTS, James.
Well, thanks, james.
Thanks for the email, and wewill keep potoing on, I guess,

(04:04):
yep.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
That's what we do around here we podoing, we
podoing.
So all good there.
Yeah, thank you again, james,for sending something in there,
especially from the fan mailside of things.
So we appreciate that, guys,and feel free, you know,
definitely we love the feedback,we love the comments, you know.
If you get questions orwhatever, feel free to send us
our way and we love to read themon every episode.

(04:28):
So keep them coming, guys.
All right, well, we don't haveanything via Winlink because
obviously our Winlink guru, paul, is not here tonight, so this
segment is going to be flying by.
This will probably be one ofour shortest episodes per se in
general content, but I'm sureit'll be long, extended once we

(04:49):
get into the soda content, whichI'm looking forward to here.
We do not have any do-goodstonight, so we are fully going
to skip over do-goods.
Obviously, we can't do an N1OGwhere he's now, because we have
no idea where he is right now,so we're just going to skip
right over him today.
Last time I think I texted himwas, uh, his last video.
He said hey, you gotta jump onthe.
You know the the premiere there.

(05:09):
I need you to be on thepremiere and I forgot, so, um,
that was like a couple of daysago.
So he is definitely, uh,probably, uh, you know,
basically working hard to gethis class a there.
So, you know, hopefully, uh,he'll have some more to share
with us when we get going there.
But with that, you know whatthat means.
This is a reprieve.
Todd gets a day off from doingsomething extra with us.

(05:31):
So you know, you know, paulaand Amy don't get to experience
the full.
You know, the full 24, seven ofof of Liffrey and ham here, as
you know.
You know, I don't know whetherthat's good or bad for you guys,
but either way, it's a goodthing they're here, because
without them, who would watchthe show?

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Because that's all they do is wait for the
something extra section.
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
That or your Chronicles of Baseball.
Either way, I'm sure you get alot of those too.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
I've got plenty of Chronicles of Baseball tonight,
if that's where you want to go,but I think I'd rather talk
about soda, but I think I'drather talk about soda with you
on that, all right.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Well, so with that, you know, uh, obviously it was
something extra.
We are a true supporter of hamstudyorg.
So, as always, the last bit,you know, head over to them If
you're looking to study here, um, actually, I think we did have
um a actually.
I'm going to say this becausebecause I know Paul's not here
and he usually does this, but wealways liked, at the very end
of a little something extra,todd, to say you know, hey, if

(06:25):
you are studying for any of yourlevel class licenses and you've
, you know, gotten your, uh, soyou know, your license class, um
, you know, send us an email.
So we actually got an emailfrom angelo.
Uh, angelo says hey guys, uh,angelo here, formerly k kilo
charlie, three zulu, lima x-ray,now whiskey three, papa, india
golf, w3, pig, pretty cool, callsign.

(06:47):
I wanted to let you, I wantedto let you guys know that I
passed my extra exam and I knewI was ready for the test when I
was able to start going threefor three on your little
something extra extra segment.
So there you go.
See, todd, you are helpingothers, you know, reach their
goals.
Uh, for the rest of my goal.
So, yeah, hopefully they'llrally around and come back.

(07:08):
He said, also hated my originalcall and the following
systematically assigned calls.
A call sign I got.
So I just got my vanity of w3pig approved.
It will all work out betterwhen handling of those hamlets.
Oh yes, and so if you don'tknow what those hamlets are, you
know we have our small littlepiglets here.
They actually have made theirway through Dayton a little bit

(07:30):
and so you know, if you're ajeeper and you have, you know,
seen the ducks that all thejeepers get, well, you know you
can head over to gethammedcomand pick up a set and you can
distribute these.
There's a small little disc onthe bottom that allows you to
write your call sign and it sayswhere to get them and you can
leave these on people's cars.
And I know mike n2mak, he'sdone a bunch of them.

(07:51):
Uh, he hammed a bunch of peopleand I've been doing it all
around my neighborhood andwhatnot, and it's always fun to
watch people like look at thesethings and go, what the heck are
these?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
and so you know it's really cool now again you have
to do it to.
I'm waiting to get an 18wheeler because I see those guys
with ham radio antennas, butthey're always cruising down
highway.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, don't chase after them.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Not a good thing, I have to get like a super magnet
on the back of it, just toss iton the truck.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah right, all right well, hey, I just got a a, you
know an fyi.
Paul said he'll be there in aminute.
He just finished the day so I'msure he's packed with his
skydiving stuff.
So, um, you know he'll, he'llwon't have to worry about doing
you know something extra, butall good.
He says on a quick side storyum, the same episode where you
read my win link email, you werereviewing a random club website

(08:38):
and it so happened.
One of those sites reviewed wasfor my local club.
I'm curious to see which clubit was, because that was the
episode.
That was the GeoCities Wants myHam Radio website back.
So if you're having a chance togo back and listen to that one,
that was a good episode.
We kind of went into verydetailed, I would say, about

(08:59):
club websites and how bad theyare and how they need to improve
to get out more in the hobby.
So all good there.
So he bad they are and how theyneed to improve to get out more
in the hobby.
All good there.
He said that Keep up with thegood work, guys.
7-3, angelo.
Angelo, again, congratulationson getting your extra.
Sir, it's awesome to hear.
I'm glad you're able to sendthat over to us and we're able

(09:19):
to share with you.
That deserves a applause thereand a great job, all right, so
let's uh plug away here.
So, as we always like to getinto, uh, stop applauding here,
don't need that much.
Um, you know, let's get into umour usual uh ham radio week
catch up, and so we've got twoguests, um, so we're going to

(09:42):
give them the floor first.
So so I'll start with Amy there.
So, in our usual format, welike to ask you know what's been
going on your Ham Radio week?
How about you, amy?

Speaker 5 (09:51):
Oh well, my, pretty much all I do in Ham Radio
anymore is the is soda.
So well, I can't say all it's,but I did two mountains
yesterday.
The bands were horrible, um,very, very poor bands.
The second one, I didn't eventry hf, just uh counted on the

(10:15):
locals.
Um, I'm, I'm also, uh, thislast week kind of I'm trying to
get a lot of our clubs okay, Ilive, I live in a valley, I live
in the rogue valley, so, um,which is reference to the rogue
river that goes through here,and so we're surrounded by many

(10:36):
mountains, um, and so there's alot of repair use.
It's uh, the simplex is a littlebit difficult, but we we've had
a lot of new operators andincluding some young people
getting into ham radio and I'veum been really pushing to get uh
more locals to get on um thecalling frequency one, four, six

(11:00):
, five, two to, just becausethat's where people usually
start, and I've been hearinglike these young boys call and
call and call and they're kindof tired of hearing me over and
over, I think.
So I I another this challengelast week to kind of put the
clubs up against each other tokeep track of their five, two

(11:24):
contacts for the summer andwe'll like have a contest going
because we have three differentcounties side by side here.
So so that's uh trying to getpeople more on the on the
calling frequency.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
So that is.
I'm pretty impressed.
That's awesome to see that.
You know, five two around hereis what we call the emergencies
channel.
You need to stay off 5-2 formore than 30 seconds and yeah,
we try to promote that similar,but that's actually a really
good way of doing it.
I think that would be kind ofcool to kind of start in the

(11:57):
summertime, because it's alwaysit's hard enough for repeaters
to get people to talk onrepeaters, but it's more so
harder to even get on five two.
So that's awesome and so like.
Do you guys have a like how arethey keeping?

Speaker 5 (12:12):
track of points.
It's just like for each contactis they they make.
It's a point I just offered aspreadsheet for people to.
You know that's it's each um,each unique um person, a
operator, that they work, andkind of like in contests, that
if you work them on sidebandit's you can count it again,
because we do have a pretty goodsideband two meter CW group

(12:35):
here and I mean that's that's.
That was sort of to try and getsome of the old timers to to be
active in this too.
I mean I have no idea if itwill take off or not, but it was
just to try and get.
I mean we, we were taught sortof the same thing.
You know, oh, don't don't callcq on five, two and all that.
But I I break that rule because, um, it just there's so little

(13:02):
activity that then I'vediscovered up on the mountains
where I can, I can be reaching,you know, 100 miles away and
there's nobody listening.
So I mean to really keep it asan emergency.
You gotta have people listening, and so that was my idea is to
just encourage people to makesure that it's in their scan,

(13:24):
make sure that you know if whenthey go out mobile call out.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Let people know you're there now, do you guys
use any of the new wildernessfrequency protocol kind of stuff
that george kj6vu is kind ofimplementing, or have you played
in any of that space at all?
I'm not familiar with it oh okay, so in in that vein of 5-2
being the emergency channel,depending on what kind of part

(13:49):
of the country you're in, it's,you know it's.
It's either okay or it'sshunned upon, depending on when
you get to use it.
Um, and what I've learned wasis that george created this, or
there was a group of people or acouple of individuals that
created a series of umfrequencies uh 140, let me see
I'm forgetting what it is.

(14:10):
It's uh 146, 58, I think it iswilderness protocol.

Speaker 5 (14:15):
I will clarify.
I I called it the.
The name of it is battle of theband and that's cool for just a
two meter challenge.
So, people, it's not just forfive, two it's just.
I know that a lot of ournewbies start there and so like
when we, when we do our camp outhere, we have two meters kind

(14:38):
of on fire, but we aren't onfive too much because we're just
too busy.
You know, that would kind ofclog it up right right now.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Why am I unable to?

Speaker 2 (14:48):
find when I'm talking about 5-2, I was in a.
I just missed an accident wherea propane truck over and
blocked both sides of thehighway and I was kind of it was
kind of going up the highway, Iwas coming down so I could see
it.
So I got got on five, twofigured.
You know, maybe someone's intraffic letting people know that
hey, if you're going to hit 93,uh, after the tolls get off,

(15:11):
cause both sides of the highwayare closed, and uh heard nothing
.
And then I went on a repeaterthat's pretty big around here,
that's got a wide footprint.
And uh, ryan, who is one of theuh here, that's got a wide
footprint.
And uh, ryan, who is one of theuh, he was, he's been on this,
he started the podcast with us,he was heading to concord.
He's like, hey, thanks for theupdate, because I'll get off now

(15:34):
and just drive by the backroads and bypass the whole thing
.
But it was funny that you knowI could only get him on a
repeater.
But five, two, I mean, with allthat traffic backed up, there
wasn't one person so.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
So I misspoke.
It's actually not wilderness.
It was originally called theWilderness Protocol, but George
implemented the Adventure RadioProtocol.
Have you heard of that?
No, I haven't Okay so I justthrew a link in the back
channels there it kind ofdescribes it and so basically
what it is is one frequency, Ithink it's 146 58.

(16:08):
Let me just grab it here.
Why am I not sitting there?
Come on, pop up, son, justwebsite.
Um, where did he?
My gosh, he changed it allaround again.
Uh, he used to have a linkthere for it.
Um, anyway, it's a 146 58 andin it is a bunch of different pl
tones and he set uh.

(16:28):
Depending on what frequency youset the uh pl tone to you, the
idea was is you could key up um,you know a cq.
So there was a cq specificchannel.
There was a cq uh, there was aemergency style channel, there
was a, you know, a back channel.
So if you want to talk to eachother, you know, within a local

(16:49):
comms area, you'd use that pltone and it was all in that same
frequency.
But the idea that you wouldn'tinterfere with someone who
didn't have like just five, twowide open, but you could use all
of those different pls in adifferent way.
So it was a pretty cool, youknow, kind of implementation
which I thought um, from hisstandpoint, made a little bit
more sense than just doing 5-2,because everybody's 5-2 and you

(17:12):
know, depending on which side ofthe country you're on, you you
get into trouble, or some daysyou, you know everyone's like oh
yeah, I'm glad to picture on5-2, um, so yeah it, uh, it's
one of those things.
Okay, you guys have 146, 58, andso he's got it's one, two,
three, four, five, c, ct, csstones.
67 hertz on that same channelis an emergency channel.

(17:34):
77 hertz is uh a ping, so youcan just ping to see anybody's
out there.
Uh, the soda poda is 88.5, andthen there's the two for 100 and
123, which is the backcountryconversations, and a local
repeater, and so yeah, it'sinteresting.
You might want to read a littlebit more about it.
I know a few folks have been uhkind of we've tried to implement

(17:55):
it around here and I've got alot of my, you know, mobile
radio set that way, um, with theidea that you know you could
tie this back into a repeaterand if you had an emergency all
you had to do was go to theemergency hertz setting, see its
tone setting, and that wouldkey up a repeater that had a
radio listening on the inputwhich would then transmit out to

(18:16):
the wider repeater so you mightbe able to get a faster
response for an emergency kindof scenario or whatever.
So it's an interesting kind ofscenario, uh, or whatever so
it's.
It's interesting uh kind of uhidea and uh strategy.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
So yeah, it's definitely a cool idea.
It's just gonna get caught on,right.
Yeah, get everyone doing it,it'll work cool well, keep us
updated on that.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
I'm curious to see how it goes well I'll have to
ping you back at the end ofsummer to see how it does,
because I know we usually like,do like the five, two nights in
summertime around here.
Well, like, everybody gets onwhat they call the mountain
toppers and they all call onfive, two, you know, but that's
like a one-time kind of thing.
Um, you know every you knowcouple of months in in
summertime as an activity, butyeah, it'd be cool to see how
that goes.
So, cool, all right.

(19:00):
Well, with that, paula, how are?
Was your Hamnigger week?

Speaker 3 (19:04):
My week was primarily spent at the Dayton Hamvention.
I came into town on Wednesday,which is two days before the
official start, but I like toget in Wednesday evening and
then spend Thursday.
There's a lot of things to doin the greater Dayton area in
addition to the Hamfest, so Iusually spend Thursday indulging
in those activities and thenhit the fest first thing on

(19:27):
Friday and Saturday.
I did not go out this morning.
I pretty much seen everythingthat I wanted to see.
I had a lot of fun this year,the B&B I stay at.
I've stayed at Dayton for likethe last 20 plus years.
Nine years ago a German couplestayed in one of the other rooms

(19:47):
and, uh, my husband and I metthem and we drove them.
I think it was the last day wedrove them to the ham fest.
So, lo and behold, this yearthey came.
Ah, there's our parachute,there's our fall, so, um.
So I I'll finish this story,and then I've got a question for
paul.
Um, so, uh, this year they camefor the hamvention again.

(20:12):
Only they weren't staying atthe b&b, but they did.
The b&b actually has a wine baras part of it one of the
advantages of b&b and, uh, theycame over to to have some wine
and and I happened to come backfrom my from my Thursday
activities in time to catch them.
So, long story short, I ended upbeing able to provide them some

(20:32):
transportation to and from theHam Fest and we had some nice
discussions along the way and,you know, generally just a good
time.
It was one of those unexpectedbonuses.
So that's been my week.
Now I have to ask Paul I'm alicensed pilot and the joke that
I always the guy I worked withwho was an avid shooters he had

(20:53):
owned his own, packed his own,everything and when we would
interview prospects I would atsome.
It would come up at some pointand I would say I have no idea
why kevin jumps out of aperfectly good airplane yep,
that's the phrase we're good,we're good all set so anyway, so

(21:14):
that was, uh, that was my week,basically the dayton hamvention
um the.
You know, prior to that time Ihad just come back, um, about 10
days ago.
I just come back from atwo-week camping trip that was
all devoted to summits on theair.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Wow, dude.
Well, I'm curious to hear moreabout that.
For sure, we're going to divein a heck of a lot more soda
activities tonight.
So buckle up, guys, if you'rehere and ready to dive into that
, awesome Cool, I'm very jealous.
You're at dayton right nowstill, so, you know you, you've
got to experience everythingover there firsthand.
Uh, sounds like it was a greatyear and the weather held out

(21:52):
well.
So, uh it, uh, you know it.
Uh, definitely, I'm sure.
Uh, it's going to give you alot of great memories and, uh,
you know, makes me a littlejealous, for sure oh, yeah, yeah
, it worked out really well.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
I did a few more of the forums than I've usually
done in the past and that wasall beneficial as well.
It included the soda forum.
It was a great forum on remotecontrol of stations.
Um, you know, I picked up anumber of tips there and uh, uh,
there was one other.
I thought there was one otherforum I attended, but I'm
drawing a blank right now, butthose two alone that was uh,

(22:24):
really, uh, really there.
Oh, I attended the umelocraft's k4 forum.
I own a k4d to the home station, so, oh, wow, you attend that.
Yeah, uh, bob n6 tv, or, as wesometimes refer to him, tv, bob
um has just incredible asset foruh elocraft and the rest of us.

(22:45):
He knows so much about thoseradios and about the K4.
And one of the presentationsduring that forum was from Bob,
with an updated list of his tipsand tricks for setting up and
using the K4.
And so he did a tremendous job.
He's just an all-around greatguy and just extremely helpful
to the community.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Very cool.
Um, it's just an all-aroundgreat guy and just extremely
helpful to the community.
Very cool.
Well, it sounds like uh, youknow if you're now I questioned
real quick question.
I assume you're k4, you're, youknow, at your remote station
are you using, when you're outin the field on soda, k3?
K2 k4 right, not, not?
Okay, I hope not, but you know.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
I've got that, sherpa , you know?
No, I'm typically using.
I started out with a KX3, whichI bought before the KX2 came
out.
I might not have owned a KX3 ifthe KX2 was available, but I
still have it.
I now use primarily a KX2 withthe sidecar edition for

(23:45):
electronic logging, which is atremendous device if you do a
lot of summits in a short periodof time, because it saves you
having to take paper logs andtransfer them into an electronic
format for upload.
And when I want to be in a morestealth mode or, as I will be
doing later this year, being ona backpacking trip, I'll use a

(24:07):
kh1 awesome dude.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Now, uh, the kh1, was that, uh, something you hand
built, or is that kind of youbought from somebody else,
pre-built, or um.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Allocraft is selling those as factory built.
I don't think there's any kitversions of oh, you can't get
them kit persons anymore.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Okay, I always thought they ever had them as as
as.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
I mean that's the that's the radio they just
released in the last year and ahalf or so.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Oh, okay, I'm thinking like the early K one
yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
You're thinking of like the K X one, I think that's
it.
Right, smaller profile, if youcan believe it.
Yeah, oh yeah, that's the one,that kind of reads sort of like
a walkie-talkie with the.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
You know the fold out like uh panel and everything
got it exactly.
Ah cool, yeah, I got my k'sright finally yeah, it gets
confusing I trust me, we all, weall have those problems.
Uh, we, we engineers, we loveto to mess things up by adding,
like, letters and numbers afterour radio.
So you know that's the way itgoes.
Ah, cool, all right.

(25:07):
Well, we're gonna get into moresoda in a second, but with that
, let's uh drop it over to you,todd, how is your ham radio week
been, my friend?

Speaker 2 (25:14):
uh, not very eventful .
Um, I've been very busy and, uh, ham radio has kind of been on
the on the back burner, but Iheard the bands haven't been too
good, so so I guess I'm notmissing much.
No, no, yeah, just a littlerepeater stuff.
I've just been really busy withbaseball and work, so things

(25:36):
will quiet down in the nextcouple weeks and then it's going
to be back to doing more podoGreat.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Cool, all right, well .
So, paul, do you want to handin to doing, uh, more podo,
great cool, all right, well so.
So, paul, do you want to handanswer your ham radio week or do
you want to just go to rightinto where's, where's n1og your
call?

Speaker 4 (25:53):
well, uh, you know.
So my, my ham radio week hasbeen very light with ham radio,
but, um, I did find two parksthat are within a half an hour
drive, and so I am planning toactivate Illinois, if you will.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Sweet, watch out for those Nazis.
Anyway, cool Dude, that'sawesome.
So is one of those the hamradio dude session or no?

Speaker 4 (26:25):
So I'm not sure if he's going to come down for one
of those two or if he's going topark in mine.
But uh, yeah, we're definitelygoing to do a uh, a combined uh,
with ham radio dude very cool,all right, well, so with that,
we're going to just go rightinto our favorite episode here.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Watch up with n1og now, a segment where we catch up
with paul on his travels.
All right, okay, well with that.
Uh, do us a brief update, myfriend, because you've been
doing a lot of skydiving becausethe weather gods have been in
your favor for the past coupleof days, correct is that?
That is correct, right?

Speaker 4 (27:04):
No, so actually I got to go Wednesday.
Wednesday was technically a dayoff for everybody, but because
the weather was so nice, we hada couple of instructors that
came in, so I got two jumps inon Wednesday.

(27:24):
Couple instructors that came in, uh, so I got, I got two jumps
in on wednesday and then I've,I've been, I've been waiting to
see if the, if the trailer wasgonna like take flight on its
own with the you know 30 plusmile an hour winds that we've
been having, oh no, um, oh, it'sbeen, it's been crazy windy,
yeah, um, but this morning,right, I got up at 6 30 and I

(27:45):
and I looked out and there's alittle bit of sun, but it was a
blanket of clouds but there wasno wind, and so I was like, all
right, this would be great, youknow, like just gotta wait for
the clouds to dissipate.
And uh, so the the drop zonesent, sent out a message and
they said, yeah, it should begood by about 11 am.
By 9 am there wasn't a cloud inthe sky.

(28:12):
So, yeah, so I got three jumpsin today.
Only one counted, you know,towards progression.
But I learned a lot.
I'm getting much more stable inmy free fall.
I'm pulling the parachute atthe right altitude and I'm doing
most of the things that I'msupposed to be doing.

(28:33):
I need to relax.
I'm a control freak right, it'sjust me.
I'm a control freak and I don'tlike not having control.
And so my third jump today.
What I needed to do was bestable in free fall, initiate a

(28:54):
90 degree turn in free fall andthen a 90 degree turn back, and
then just maintain my headingand my altitude awareness.
And I could not maintain myturn.
And so I started to spin.
And then, the more I wasspinning, the more I was tensing

(29:20):
and I was getting my body inall the wrong types of positions
.
And I was getting my body inall the wrong types of positions
.
Had I taken a breath right andjust relaxed?
I had plenty of altitude, but Iwas probably in the 7,000 range

(29:48):
at that point.
But, feeling out of control, Idid what I was taught, which was
to pull the parachute Now,alright.
So when I pulled the parachute,because of the way that I was
twisting, I ended up turning onmy side and then rolling over
onto my back as the parachutedeployed.
Oh, and so the parachuteactually went like completely

(30:12):
around me.
Oh yes, and I went through itand so my risers were twisted
but the canopy inflated fully.
I checked it for steerabilityand controllability and I and I
had steerability andcontrollability, um, but I mean
I was 7 000 feet up at thatpoint, so I had a lot of canopy

(30:37):
time today, uh, which I mean itwasn't bad.
You know know, I I very much.
I am looking forward to the daythat, uh, I can just jump out
at you know 13, 13,800 and pullright away and just enjoy all of
that canopy time.
Uh, but I, I got to learn thefree fall stuff and so, yeah, I

(30:58):
just I need to relax, I need tobreathe and just slow things
down.
So and just slow things down.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
So you were on your back the parachute and you went
right through the string so youwere like one loop around.
Yep, holy crap, paul, that'scrazy.
Were you thinking like I haveto pull the second?

Speaker 4 (31:24):
release it and pull the back up.
So initially, yes, it did crossmy mind that I was gonna have
to cut away.
Um, dude, I I all right, soyou'll you'll have to wait for
the video.
But my left, my left leg, myleft leg was actually over my
head and through the risers, mygosh dude, and and I mean, the

(31:45):
canopy was inflated.
So I knew I was good, I didn't,I didn't need to panic in that
moment, but I was like, how do Iunfuck this and get my leg out
from over my head so that I'm?
I'm where the where I'msupposed to be?

Speaker 3 (32:04):
yeah, definitely trying to reconcile yeah phrase
control, freak and parachuting.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
That's just not she's still on that part that's just
that you know what's crazy?

Speaker 2 (32:17):
paul is like that that happens right like it's.
It's like that would scare thecrap out of me.
And then you're like, yeah, Igotta go back out there and fix
this, like that probably wouldhave been like for me like, yep,
I'm good on this a lot, notdoing that again.
It will.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
I mean, the thing is, suck the paint off your house
and give your family a permanentorange Afro.
You know?
No, no functions are going tohappen though.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
That they will well, I guess, yeah, I guess it's,
yeah, I mean, at least you're,you're calm enough to uh, to
analyze it and then make theright decision and get back down
, you know, safely.
But I never realized it was sodifficult when you're free
falling, you know, because whenyou see videos and stuff, you
just see those guys floatingaround and moving and upside
down and you don't realize how,uh, how hard that is.

(33:08):
I guess I always thought it wasjust like easy, like once you
jump out of the plane, you justkind of put your arms on, you're
good just jump out of the plane, no problem right now it's uh,
it it's if you, if you, if youtenth, right, so?

Speaker 4 (33:23):
So the analogy that was given to me was imagine a
piece of sheet metal fallingthrough the sky, okay, versus a
sheet of paper.
The sheet of paper is going tolet the wind manipulate it and
it's going to float, and it'sgoing to just let the wind do
its thing, but the tense sheetof metal, of metal that's just

(33:46):
gonna fall.
And so that's what I was doingwith my body was I was, I was
tense and I wasn't letting thewind carry me.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
So, yeah, maybe you should have like an ativan or
something in mid-flight.
Pop it and you'll be like, comeon, relax, now I can do this,
or take one before you jump Idon't think that's like in
encouraged at all at that leveljust because of you know
cognitive, you know motor skillsneed to kick in somewhere along

(34:17):
that process don't you say thatin it?
Uh, it pulls at a certainaltitude anyway yeah, okay,
that's the emergency issue.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
Yes, sir you don't want to rely on that, that's
like an insurance policy.
Yeah, if, if you are still infree, fall at like uh 11, 50, uh
roundabouts, then the aad willfire off and and it'll put your
reserve over your head.

(34:48):
But by that point, like I meanyou're falling so fast, like
you're, you're still gonna havea rough landing.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah how are your landings been?

Speaker 4 (35:01):
landings.
Landings have been good.
Honestly, um, I mean today I, II misjudged the wind, um, the
the wind was, you know, a steadykind of six, seven knots, um,
when, when we took off, and then, because I spent so much time
under the canopy, by the time Iwas ready for my landing, the,

(35:24):
the wind had completely died andso I had a lot more travel, uh,
you know, glide time than I hadanticipated, so I kind of
overshot my where I was supposedto land, uh, but I landed in a,
in a nice soft, empty cornfieldand, uh, it wasn't bad.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
I brought a bunch of souvenirs like someone, like a
farm or something?
Or was it like the sameproperty of where you're
supposed to land?

Speaker 4 (35:55):
so yeah, so I was on the, I was on the this, the the
air, air field, um, but there'sthere's a small cornfield on,
like that butts it, and thenthere's a road that separates
the other cornfields, so I Ilanded in the better cornfield.
But yeah, oh man, it'll makesome great videos no kidding.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Wow, all right, man well, but I have to say this is
not going to be a dull momentwhatsoever with you, is it?

Speaker 4 (36:27):
no, not at all this.
This is going to be one hell ofa ride awesome.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
We appreciate you sharing those uh crazy uh you
know moments and uh, we're soglad that, uh, you got a level
head about it and you're you'restill here to talk about them,
because, uh, you know, we wouldnot want that to happen for sure
.
But, uh, you know, keepplugging away, man, I'm sure
you'll figure it out all week.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Now I'm gonna be worrying, like you know, what
did he do now?
Like, is he inverted?
You know he's hanging by hisankles or something.
Yep, I always see those, youever see those guys parachute.
Then they can do like thetricks and they do like the
flips, like that scares the crapout of me, like when they go
upside down, so the parachute isactually inflated but it's
under, and then they whip aroundlike those.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Let's, let's stop planting ideas in his head and
let's just let him get hisbasics down first, you know,
because apparently he wants toget his uh, you know his
stretching in while he's at like7 000 feet.
But you know, my gosh, justwhere you were trying to
describe where your ankle andleg was, I'm like thinking, oh
my gosh, my joints are killingright now.

Speaker 4 (37:31):
Oh, I'm sure I'll probably be a little stiff and a
little sore tomorrow, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
You know I could be like my Gumby was when I was a
kid.
Anyway, cool, well, that isawesome stuff is always good to
hear it.
Cool, well, that is awesomestuff is always good to hear.
And you know we're rooting foryou, man, and appreciate, you
know, giving us the updates andso, you know, if you want to
hear more or you want to be ableto, like, you know, chime in or
ask a question, feel free tohit us up on all of our usual

(37:59):
channels there to.
You know, leave a message foryou know, all there.
You know, so cheer them on andand, hey, if you want to help
support them, definitely headover to livefreeathamcom, click
that button, because, my god,it's getting expensive every
single day, I'm sure, for him.
So, you know, if you can helphim out, you know, definitely go
over and, uh, you know, supporthis patreon page.
Uh, and support his.

(38:20):
Uh, you know, um, am Iforgetting what is?
Is it GoFundMe?

Speaker 4 (38:24):
GoFundMe yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
That's up on our website too, up on the top
right-hand corner, so easy,quick access.
So, yeah, cool, all right.
Well, with that, you know weare going to get into some
really cool stuff tonight.
So you know we've been plowingfast through our usuals here and

(38:47):
you know we're uh up to uh, youknow, our main topic tonight.
So I'm looking forward to itbecause we've been working with
amy for a while to try to kindof get this coordinated.
I think when we reached out itwas way back in january, um, and
so to kind of just set the youknow stage here a little bit, uh
, sometime in the januaryepisode, uh, or january, I'm not
episode january edition.
Thank you, um.
Ofst.
This article came out aboutwomen in soda and this whole

(39:09):
event and I just was enthralledby the article and I just was
like eating it up and I was likethis is really cool.
I'm like I got to reach out toher.
It sounds like she's doing somereally cool stuff.
I'm always interested in havingfolks like that on our show and
you know I want to promote, youknow, that aspect of you know
the hobby, because I feel, likeyou know, every piece of the

(39:29):
hobby is important, but more solike I do a little soda.
I mean a little bit, I mean noteven this, this is not even a
true example of how much soda Iactually do.
I mean Paul can contest to that.
I mean I literally we've doneone soda hike.
He's one more than I have.
So you know, um, I am not anystretch of the imagination when
I say I'm in just, you know, asoda or soda go, but we got some

(39:50):
, we'll say, professionals,experts, you know ladies out of
all the benches that canprobably rival me, you know, and
walk circles around me, youknow, with all the mountains
they do on a, you know, a dailybasis, um, so you know I we're
here tonight to share, you know,both, the stories from Amy and
Paula, and so we're going to doa little introduction with them.

(40:11):
They're going to talk a littlebit about their background and
how they kind of got into hamradio and, and you know, soda
itself, and then talk about moreof the, you know, the, the
whole YL experience, because Ithink there's a bunch of ladies
in our community here that theyall they do poda, they do ham
radio activities, and I want tohave them inspired, I want to be
able to kind of expand thatreach, because I feel like it's

(40:33):
super important that we reallyshine some light on some really
good aspects of the hobby andjust bring that more to the
foreground, because it justgives more people more
opportunities to be able to justget in and have some fun.
So with that we're going tostart start and I'm going to
introduce uh, amy first.
So, amy, happenstall, uh, alphagolf, seven golf, papa, um, go

(40:54):
ahead, amy maybe.
So tell us a little bit aboutuh, your kind of you know story
of ham radio and where you kindof got up to this point into
soda, and then, you know, we'llhand it over to paula and do a
little introduction with her andthen we can kind of talk more
about the you know yls and sodaand stuff like that.
So floor's all yours okay, well, thank you.

Speaker 5 (41:13):
Um, well, I've been licensed since 2017 and I mainly
got into ham radio because, uh,we have some off-grid property
and my husband and I needed away to communicate with each
other and but I took a course.
I, a local club, uh, did acourse for getting licensed, um,

(41:36):
and I was just really inspiredby the magic of hF.
I really wanted to learn moreand so, kind of immediately
after I got licensed, I got intoportable.
I mean, my first portableactivation was the total eclipse

(41:58):
, the totality, and with mycousin and set up my station and
I mean, I had only beenlicensed for two months, but, um
, it was that that led to um,worldwide foreign fauna and
parks on the air, which wasfairly new and not not as not

(42:21):
very popular over here in thewest coast yet and um, so that
was like 2018 and eventually itled me.
You know, I had a lot of peoplebugging me.
You know, well, you should trysoda, you should try soda, but
it's like, yeah, I don't know ifI can hike these mountains.
You know it wasn't.
I'm a very outdoorsy person,but never the summiting and I

(42:46):
really didn't think that I coulddo it.
And but once I did that one.
I was hooked, and cause it'sjust soda here in the West Coast
is well, I'll tell you my firstone.
I made the mistake.
I took all my poda gear, so Iclimbed up a mountain with, you
know, 25, 30 pounds of gear andalso I was just starting CW and

(43:13):
100 watts one year for CW.
Not a good idea?
Well, because I was used to,you know, here on the West Coast
for doing parks.
You had to be able to reach atleast the Midwest, usually the
East, in order to get enoughcontacts, because there just

(43:33):
wasn't anybody really chasinghere in the West.
And so when I combined it witha soda, I just couldn't believe
it, like how much came out fromunder the woodwork, how many
people were doing it here.
And so that was pretty much mystart.
You know, I was just hooked, Idownsized and I was just

(44:00):
inspired by the operators.
The support, just the teameffort in soda is um.
I just don't experience it into that level in any other ham
radio community that I've.
I've been involved with um, Ithink partly because it's, you

(44:20):
know, with soda it's more thanjust getting on the air.
You know there's a lot ofsafety, there's survival stuff.
You know you have to be prettyprepared and I've learned so
much about.
You know I'm typically a solohiker and people think I'm crazy
at times, but it's like I kindof like it, you know.

(44:42):
But I wouldn't have done thatif I wouldn't have had the
support and kind of guidance ofwhat to bring, what not to bring
and um, it's a.
It incorporates a lot of theoutdoors too.
You know I do.
I do a lot of birding andmushroom hunting and you know so
it's there's, there's never adull moment.
It's, it's, uh, the.

(45:02):
The radio at the top of themountain is kind of just the
bonus.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, it's icing on the cake, kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So I got to ask the question.
Obviously, you said you startedat the 25-pound pack level.
What radios were you bringingup with you?

Speaker 5 (45:20):
At the time MK2G, the Icom MK2G, at the time MK2G,
the Icon MK2G, and I had a, youknow, bioino battery.
So that was a bit lighter thana car battery, but still a
clunker.
And then my first few, I stilllet's see.

(45:51):
I think I was using a wolfriver coil.
You know it was a quite a,quite a.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
And then I went from that down to a mountain topper.
Oh my gosh, wow, okay, so thatthat was a big, definitely a big
jump from, uh, you know, goingfor a wolf of recoil.
Wow, I never thought like I, Ithat you're actually probably
the first soda person I think Iever heard bring a wolf of
recoil.
Wow, I never thought like I, Ithat you're actually probably
the first soda person I think Iever heard bring a wolf of
recoil up there.
Most of the guys and folks I'vetalked to is like they're
throwing up random wires orwhatever.
But that that's impressive.

Speaker 5 (46:13):
Uh, you know, I, I give you kudos, that was what I
had and also, like I say it was,it was uh.
I was used to doing parks andthis was also a park this is
maybe it's in the cascadesiskiyo national monument and so
I didn't think it was going tobe significantly different.

(46:34):
You know, I thought that that'ssort of what I would need to be
heard and, um, I was wrong soyou subscribe to what us poda
folks really love.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
You know, we, we 100 watts the way to go.
I mean none of this.
You know 10, 20 watts, it'slike 100 watts.
You're gonna hear us, no matterwhat.
This is the way it goes.
So, okay, impressive, um, oh,cool, okay.
So you, you started, you know,obviously in that sense, and
realized that you can't, youknow, hike a 25 pound pack.
Uh, you know, up and down themountain.
So, uh, do you still continueto stay with the same radio and

(47:05):
you just downsize your batteriesand your antenna, or did you
just switch gear out alltogether?

Speaker 5 (47:11):
I switched a lot of gear, you know, for I was at the
time working on code and soswitching to the mountaintop are
really, uh, that's a big step,you know to take.
Only um, a code, a cw radio,you know you have no choice but
to operate it and you knowthere's no, no backup, sideband

(47:34):
and um.
So that's that was what I usedfor quite a while, but then I um
, I also have kx2, I I mainlyhave been using the kicks too.
Well, another thing is the, thebands.
You know, in 2019, um, thesolar cycle was still pretty
dead, and so the 2030, 40, 20,40, you know those were the

(48:00):
bands that you use, the.
We didn't have 15 and 10 openyet, and so, as those open
opened, I kind of migrated moreto the kx2 now, did you when you
got back in, when you startedin the hobby in 2017?

Speaker 1 (48:14):
did you go right to your general or do you just like
start your soda kind ofprogression at technician?

Speaker 5 (48:21):
I'm actually an instant extra and um, but I
don't want that to fool, anybodyis not here to hear this.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
My gosh, he is not here.

Speaker 5 (48:30):
You would just be like oh you, literally three
tests, wow people think that Imight know something with that,
but it's, uh, it was.
Actually I took a class thatfocused on passing your tech in
general at the same sitting andI got really sick the week
before and I was so sick of thisclass to be honest with you,

(48:57):
and people were saying, you know, oh well, you're going to
forget half of it in six monthsanyways, and stuff like that in
six months anyways, and stufflike that.
And so I thought, you know, I'mjust gonna, I'm just gonna go
on hamstudyorg and see what allI can get and memorize as much
as possible, learn later.
And because I had a week athome being sick and nothing to

(49:19):
do and that's that's my extraknowledge, I mean, it's pretty
minimal.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
That's impressive.
I don't think I had the staminato go through all three of
those.
I mean, obviously I got mytechnician way early on, but the
general.
Just once I got through at theCOVID stage, I was like I don't
know if I'm ready for extra.
And then I was like, all right,you got to do a little later,
just to get it off the plate,kind of thing.
But, dude, I applaud extra.
And then I was like, all right,you got to do a little later,

(49:47):
just to get it off the plate,kind of thing.
But, dude, I applaud you.
That's impressive.
All right, cool, all right.
Well, so, uh, you got anyquestions?
Paul, you want to?
Uh, you know, throw it to amythere.
Well, before we hand it over topaula, well.

Speaker 4 (49:57):
So I was just curious .
Um, so I I lived in, uh,central and southern oregon for
three years and, um, the theeastern part of the state is
absolutely beautiful and thecoast is absolutely beautiful.
The center is kind of boring,um, but so I'm just curious,
like what's uh, what's like yourfavorite places in in the

(50:20):
cascades to go?
Because I mean, you're talking,that's a, that's a good, good
range yeah, oh gosh.

Speaker 5 (50:27):
Where did you live?
In Oregon, um so.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
I lived.

Speaker 5 (50:31):
I lived in Corvallis and I lived in Grants Pass in
Medford okay because I live inPhoenix, which is okay, yep,
five miles south of Medford, yep, yeah.
Well, I don't know Favorite,that's a tough one.

(50:52):
I mean I really like themountains here surrounding the
Rogue Valley, the Siskiyou Crest, which you might be familiar
with.
I mean it kind of goes overtowards Grants Pass and part of
the Klamath Mountains.
Siscu Mountains are kind ofpart of the Klamath Mountains,

(51:14):
but I love the eastern Oregondesert.
I mean that's what we weresaying before you came on board,
I mean that's what we weresaying before you came on board.
Oregon, especially SouthernOregon, it's a pretty unique
location to where it's just adrive to whatever you want, from
the ocean to the desert.
You know everything in between.

(51:36):
But I'm a mountain person, atree person.
You know I like being in thewoods.
I'm not much of an ocean person.
So it's pretty much from theCascades East is where I am.

Speaker 4 (51:49):
Love it All right, cool Paul, are you also in?

Speaker 3 (51:57):
Central or Southern Oregon?
I am not.
I am not.
I'm in the big flyover region.

Speaker 4 (52:03):
Okay, you're not far from where I am currently, then.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
Where are you currently?

Speaker 4 (52:09):
Rochelle Illinois.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm just probably closeto an hour.
I live close to an hour east ofwhere you are.
You're just south of Rockford,yep, it's a larger city up in
the north.
You know kind of the northcentral part of the state and
this guy I mentioned, who I workwith, who was, you know, jumped

(52:32):
every weekend when the weatherwas good.
He actually moved out toColorado, but I think he used to
go out your way.
There's probably a few otherpeople I know of that you may
have intersected with, or atleast you know, knew at one
point.
They may have moved, that wouldjump from that area.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
Yeah, so I'm at Chicagoland Skydiving Center,
which is that's one of thebiggest ones around, so Super
super Well, I'll be hometomorrow.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
come on over and visit.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
All right, we'll go.
We'll go do a poda if the uh,if the wind's too high.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
Yeah, there you go there you go.

Speaker 5 (53:09):
I wanted to mention to paul, you know, um, if you
ever tone it down a little, youknow this right outside of town
here.
Well, you're familiar withjacksonville ruch yep okay, wood
rat mountain nationalinternational paragliding place

(53:35):
and it's actually I got it addedto poda and it's one of the
best places to activate podOTA.
You're up on the cliff thetakeoff cliff for the
paragliding events and justanybody who's paragliding and
you get to land in a cow pastureinstead of the cornfields.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Different shades of scenery.
Watch out for your staff rightexactly very cool, all right,
well, so let's kind oftransition to paula there.
So, paula, uh, thank you againfor coming.
Paula, uh, you shan uh, canineir, I got the last name right,
right, yeah, you should okay,cool, excellent, awesome, uh, so

(54:21):
you know, uh, thank you forcoming on.
So give us a little bit of yourbackground, your story and and
you know how you got into hamradio and take it from there.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
OK, thanks very much for inviting both of us to join
you all.
It's a fun place to be.
I first was first licensed in1976.
I saw a sign for a licenseclass at university.
It was my last quarter.
I thought, oh, this will besomething fun.
This is something I wanted todo years back.

(54:50):
I'm going to kick back my lastquarter at school.
So I attended the class.
This was back in the days wherethey had the novice license
level, which you held for a yearwith cw only privileges.
Um, the instructorsadministered both the code test
it was a five word per minutetest as well as the written test

(55:14):
.
So the second day of the firstday of class they gave us the
code.
The second day they tapped.
The second day that we went itwas once a week now yes, was
that an actual at at FCC centeror no?
no, no, this was on campus.
This was two guys, um, one.
One one of the fellows, uh,helping run the class was a
local ham who lived in Chicago.

(55:34):
The other guy was, uh, an MBAstudent at the same university
who was, uh, had been a ham fora number of years, and so they
knew each other and they ranthis class on the campus.
I think we probably had aclassroom somewhere in the tech
center that we were able to usefor this purpose.
So you know, five words perminute is, at least to me, is a

(55:56):
speed where you know you canactually run through the
inventory of all the letters andnumbers in your head between
each character and figure outwhat it is.
So I passed the test.
I either didn't pay attentionor they just sprung it on us by
surprise, um, but the writtentest wasn't until, um, actually

(56:17):
school was done for the year andI remember the guy from chicago
came over to my house with thewritten test and he proctored it
, and then I had to wait threemonths for the results to come
in and I think I finally got mylicense, uh, like three days
before I started law school,which was not a great timing
because, you know, talk aboutnot having any time for anything

(56:39):
, but I somehow managed to makethe time to get on the air.
Uh, I mentioned the novice wasonly good for a year.
If you didn't upgrade, you losteverything.
So that following so I get thelicense in August.
In March I go down to the FCCoffice.
So you know, talk about wayback in the Stone Age Went to
the FCC office and took a 13word per minuteminute code test

(57:02):
at that point to get the generallicense and at that point they
didn't allow you to pass aparticular element and come back
and get the other one.
To put it another way, if youflunked the code test, you went
home, you didn't get to take thewritten.
So I take the code test andthere's a bunch of guys waiting
in the lobby and me and the FCC.

(57:25):
I thought was a little bitinsensitive.
They came out periodically andsaid Mr So-and-so you did not
pass, mr So-and-so you did notpass.
Oh that hurts.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Public embarrassment.
Yeah, it was a shame.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
I know.
Shame.
Where's the bell?
Shame.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
It's going to be me One of the chances.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
I passed this thing but I did.
And then I sat for the writtenand I passed that.
And then and I knew thisbecause I had brought my Nye
Viking straight key with me Iknew that they might ask to test
me on sending.
And sure enough they did.
And I will say I could sendreally really fast with a

(58:07):
straight key.
I probably had the distancebetween the contacts.
You might not even have beenable to fit a piece of paper
through it, wow.
So I start ripping through thatand after about 10 seconds of
that they had enough.
So I had upgraded a general.
I had to go down to the FCCoffice to go to the advanced
class license.
That was a test only, no codeelement.

(58:28):
I finally was part of the VEprogram when I upgraded to extra
and I had to pass the 20 wordper minute code test.
At that point this would havebeen, I think, in 90 or 91, I
want to say maybe 1990.
90 or 91, I want to say maybe1990.

(58:51):
Um, and then a written test aswell.
And so that's how I ended upwith the license class that I
have now.
And in that time when I firststarted operating, I eventually
gravitated towards dx and that'sbeen a common theme throughout.
A pretty avid dxer in my homestation is built to optimize my
ability to work DX.
But around 2014, I startedchasing Soda.
I don't remember how I becameaware of Summits on the air, but

(59:15):
I did, and I started justchasing people who were
operating from Summits.
In 2016, october, I finallyactivated my my first summit.
So I've been activating forabout the last nine, ten years.
Wow, and so it's.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
I say I do everything , from qro with dx to qrp with
you probably were doing so muchdx that when you heard this why
doesn't it sound like a contest?
Reply back that you're like Igotta answer this and that's.
You know, you were like this isrefreshing yeah, absolutely,
absolutely.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
It's uh, so, and to me it soda combines two things
that I love to do I loveoperating radio and I like being
in the outdoors, and so to meit's a perfect combination of
activities.
To do soda effectively for mereally requires me to stay in
shape, quite candidly, um, so I,I, I belong to a hiking club in

(01:00:09):
the chicago area.
Uh, we hike anywhere from 8 to12 miles every sunday.
I hike in addition to that, um,and in fact, a lot of my
earlier soda activity once I gotmy first few done.
Um, when you live in the mid,believe it or not, there are
summits in all three of the ninearea states and even in Iowa

(01:00:32):
there's like five states thatdon't have any summits, but of
course they're not necessarilyat the same altitude as a lot of
the summits, say in Colorado orNew Hampshire, for example, as
a lot of the summits say inColorado or New Hampshire, for
example.
But I'd like to see if I couldmaximize my opportunity whenever
I was near several summits, tryto work as many as I could in a

(01:00:56):
day, and I started thinking ofthat type of approach to summits
on the air as being verysimilar to biathlon summits on
the air as being very similar tobiathlon, where you
cross-country ski to aparticular location and the
speed is important, and then youtake off your gear, you take a
rifle and you shoot at a targetfor accuracy at a great distance

(01:01:17):
, and then you don all your gearand you go to the next target
location.
For me it was hiking to asummit, setting up my radio,
operating from there, hikingback down, going on to the next
summit, rinse, repeat for asmany as you could in a single
day, and the term I coined forthat is biathlon for geeks.

(01:01:40):
So if you Google that, you willfind and especially if you
Google that phrase and like theword outside magazine, you will
find an online article writtenby a fellow like about.
It came out post-COVID, so itprobably came out 2019, 2020.

(01:02:01):
And I think that's thesecondary title in his article.
It's by athlon for geeks, buthe interviewed um several of us,
several soda participants, andwrote this great article that
you know.
I think if somebody that wasn'tinvolved with it read it, they'd
go oh wow, this looks, soundsso cool.

(01:02:22):
I'd love to do it, and in factwe get a lot of people.
I came to soda already, being aham.
But there's a fair number ofpeople in soda that come to it
from being in the outdoors.
They're avid outdoorsmen,they've been doing tons of stuff
for decades and then they findout about this radio stuff and
they're like oh wow, I'm goingto add that into my what I'm

(01:02:52):
doing.
And there's quite a few veryactive operators, uh, throughout
the country that have come tosummits on the air and to ham
radio uh, through that route.

Speaker 5 (01:02:56):
Yeah, yeah, it's impressive a lot of search and
rescue people.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
You know that right incorporated the radio into it
due to being in search andrescue yeah, I would like to try
to think of a few guys thatwe're talking about.
My gosh, I'm just red summit RF.
He doesn't do the emergencyside of stuff, but who am I
thinking of?
That's over in California.

(01:03:19):
Adam K6ARK yeah, k6ark Adamdefinitely has that background.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
And there's another gentleman out in California that
was at one of the soda campoutsthe first soda campout I was at
and I am drawing a blank on hiscall sign, but he flew from
California to participate inthis campout in southwestern
Virginia and he also had beeninvolved with Search and Rescue.
Actually, somebody inConnecticut and I'm so

(01:03:49):
embarrassed I'm going to get hiscall sign wrong his name is
paul.
I want to say oh, uh, novemberone zulu fox, okay, um, he is
very active with summits on theair and he actually has
wilderness medicine training wowand I mean I mean not the basic
course.
I've taken the basic course.
He's gone well beyond that, sohe is definitely qualified.

(01:04:09):
I think he had been a hamalready, but nevertheless he
combined those.
So, just a question.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
So when you're going up and down, so when you're
going up and down summits,what's your max number that
you've achieved so far?
What's your overall record foryourself?

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
You're talking about, in one day.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
In a day.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
yeah, I think I've done seven in one day.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Holy crap, you've hiked seven mountains.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Seven mountains in one day, that's impressive.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Let me put it in perspective.
So there are a number ofsummits In fact I would say the
majority of them.
You have to hike some distanceto get there.
There are some summits that wecall drive-ups, where you
literally can drive to thesummit location.
Now, unlike POTA, we have toset up our stations in a way

(01:05:02):
such that you could drive thecar away but not drive part of
the station away.
Okay, so our setup has to betotally independent of the
vehicle commercial power sources, all of that.
We basically have to carry allthat stuff in.
So it does help when you'reactivating a number of summits
in one day if some of those areeither short hikes and or

(01:05:24):
drive-ups.
And the day I did that, Iactually did it up in Wisconsin
and I probably put over 300miles on the car that day,
because, while there are anumber the most number of
summits out of the three statesin the nine call area, the vast
majority of summits are inWisconsin.
That said, there's a fairamount of distance between most
of them, and so you're doing alot of driving in order to hit

(01:05:47):
them.
I think I had originallytargeted doing something like
eight, and it just got too latein the day and I was actually on
Zulu time going into the nextday so it technically wasn't
going to count anymore anyway,but I did seven that day.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
I thought you had to hike into all the summits.
We have a mountain here, Pacmanto Ednock, and you can hike it
or you could drive it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
You can do a drive up and I suppose technically you
can.
You're going to be doing somehiking anyway, just to set up
your station because you'regoing to be away from the car
and so you have you know, if yougo, you know you're at the
summit top.
Uh, some summits, um, they'redrive-ups, but they might be

(01:06:39):
eight, nine mile drives ongravel roads.
So, as a practical, you'reprobably not going to.
You could hike it, there's noquestion about it.
You could drive part of it andtry to find an area that would
be safe to park and hike up therest of it.
And then there's otherdrive-ups where you clearly
could hike the entire distance,like in a state park, for
example.
But it's also a legitimateapproach to drive all the way to

(01:07:05):
the summit, or to what we callthe activation zone, which is an
area defined as within 82vertical feet of the summit
itself, and then activate fromthere, set up your station.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Now, what makes us, what makes like so like parks,
has a list like is there a listof summits on the air or soda
mountains, or is it any mountain?

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
There is a list and it's in a database.
There is information, ofdetailed information about every
summit.
It's latitude and longitude,it's height in either feet or
meters.
It's designators.
So, like with COTA, there's adesignator for every location,
for every park.
There is a format that summitson the air follows to designate

(01:07:55):
and distinguish one summit fromanother.
The essential concept inunderstanding what qualifies as
a summit and what does not is amountaineering concept, very
well-known term for mountaineerscalled prominence.
So you could have some verytall summits, but not all of

(01:08:18):
them may qualify for summits onthe air because, either relative
to each other or theirsurroundings, they don't have
sufficient prominence.
Most soda associations aroundthe world require I believe it's
um 150 meters of prominence.
Um, there are some that defineit as 100 meters, um.

(01:08:41):
So so to give you an example,the tallest point in the state
of Illinois is not a summit.
If I showed you a picture of it,you would say that's the
tallest point, because there'snot even a slope to it, it's
just the highest point andprobably if you walked a mile

(01:09:04):
from it the difference inelevation would be negligible.
But that's the highest point.
The actual summits in Illinoisare much farther south in the
state and they're more or less acontinuation of the Ozark Range
that's in Missouri and Arkansas.
If you look at a map you'll seethey pretty much follow the
same latitude and, I think, thesame with Indiana for the most

(01:09:24):
part, whereas ones in Wisconsinfollow some different mountain
ranges that also go into theupper peninsula of Michigan.
I think they're called thePeconies in one state and
they're referred to by anotherterm in the other state.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Now, are there summits?
We have now parks all over theworld.
Are there summits all over theworld?
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
Absolutely.
This was actually an activitythat was started in 2001 in
England and it really took offin Europe quite a bit, and then,
of course, stateside as well.
There are summits, but therealso needs to be an association.
So, to give you an example, Ijust learned attending the SOTA

(01:10:08):
forum at Dayton, that someonewent to American Samoa Kilo
Hotel 8, and wanted to activatethere and realized there was no
association there, associationthere.
So, long story short, hecontacted the management team

(01:10:28):
for summits on the air and heactually became the association
manager for KHA and then he wasable to activate at least one
summit over there.
There's a summit on BouvetIsland, which is a very, very
rare DX entity to work.
In fact, there will be anoperation.
There's an operation plannedfrom bouvet next year in

(01:10:49):
february, probably the februarymarch time frame.
Um, I don't know that they'regoing to be able to get to a
summit there, but I know some ofthe guys who are on the team
and I'm definitely going to putthe bug in their ear the same
way I did for the last bouvetoperation, just in case I know,
like you don't need one morething on their list.

(01:11:11):
Right, they had a tough time onthe island already if you read
about the last few operationsfrom there you talk about.
You know amy mentioned hazard,and this is independent of
summits on the air.
There are de-expeditions thatinvolve, uh, potential hazard
and concerns as well, and bouvetis definitely one of them.
I mean you could be locked intothat island on because of ice

(01:11:35):
flows and you're not coming off,I mean unless they can chopper
you off or something.
The weather there is so crazy,absolutely miserable, so there
is some high risk involved.
I I'm not holding my breath forsoda from there, but it's an
example of where there is asummit.
There.
We just don't have anassociation because nobody
inhabits that island in thenormal course, except for a

(01:11:56):
special trip.

Speaker 5 (01:11:57):
I'll mention that just this is also an example of
people who combine soda withtheir other activities N6RUN.
He's been working on the, theseven summits, the seven high
points of the continents, andjust this, just a few days ago,

(01:12:19):
he completed everest oh, he did,oh, my god activated on top of
mount everest he, he hiked tothe top of mount everest.
he completed it and, um, butit's not a soda because there's
no association.
And I think that there one ofour regulars did reach out to

(01:12:39):
try and make it, although youknow the chance of operating up
there are pretty slim.
Did he operate from there?
But you know it also, it wasreally neat.
It was also a good example ofthe support involved.
I mean, he allowed, he offeredhis GPS, a link to his Garmin,

(01:13:05):
so here stateside we werekeeping track of him that night.
I mean this was just likesunday night, I think, um, or or
, I'm sorry, anyway it's just afew days ago and you know
watching his each little post,of each little gps spotter and
everybody's rooting for him,seeing him on the on the top of

(01:13:26):
everest that's crazy, that'sawesome.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Looking at his QRZ page, his last post was Mount
Diablo 1173 meters.
Two points 13 Cusos, 13 Cusos.
My friend, we complained at thePOTA level that we barely
crushed 13 Cusos.
This guy's up on the top offreezing cold depths of
mountains 13 Cusos are amazing.
Wow, that's impressive, holymoly.
Cusos are amazing.

(01:13:50):
Wow, that's impressive, holymoly isn't there?

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
isn't there a um?
Isn't there a park that's likeup in space, like on the space?
Isn't the space station a park?
I think it is, oh, I think itis, oh, I really do.
I think there is there's somenews, what?

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
where do you get your news?
I'm curious, I'm gonna look itup.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
It's like I did it, like one astronaut was in sepota
and he, I don't know it's.
I think I'm almost positiveit's a park okay, you heard it
here.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Folks, I'm curious to see who we who's the who's the
first timer for activating thatpark.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
I don't know, I could be wrong.
Maybe it was a dream I had,okay man space.
Hey, you know why not?

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
we could have a space force.
We could have a space.
Uh, I don't know, I could bewrong.
Maybe it was a dream I had.
Okay, man, why not?
We could have a Space Force.
We could have a Space PhotoParks.
Oh good, amy, have you donesomething similar?
Do you have an all-time recordin terms of most mountain peaks
in a day?

Speaker 5 (01:14:46):
Well, I haven't kept track really.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Oh, modest person Okay.

Speaker 5 (01:14:53):
Probably, five is probably as many as I've done.
Wow, but yeah, some of us.
There's actually a guy inCalifornia that I think that he
literally keeps track of hispoints per gallon.
In the California area it's alot of one pointer bay area and

(01:15:15):
so it's.
There's argument of thefairness of the point system and
stuff.
But um, yeah, so you know whenyou, when you're driving a
couple miles, you got to getyour points per gallon.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
So that's always been a kind of a rub for me,
especially with like in the parksystem.
I mean a poda.
In general there's no realpoints per second, but you know,
if you're a paper chaser, yourpaper you're.
You're basically just kind ofgetting minimum 10 for each park
.
I know it's obviously lower forsoda, but is it who came up
with that point system?
Because I was like when I firststarted to look in the sodas

(01:15:50):
program I'm like man, it's gonnatake me a long time to like get
to goat out of that.
Goats a thousand, right.
Is that correct, right?
yeah, so a thousand points is along way to go.
If you have one pointerseverywhere you live, that that's
like painful and like you getbonuses here and there.

Speaker 5 (01:16:07):
But you know, is that something you just strive for
or no?
There are volunteers, I thinkthat put in the effort.
I don't know exactly how it wasdone.
I mean, I know who did it forour region on the West Coast and
he did a great job and I thinkpart of it is based on your

(01:16:28):
average um, the, the averageelevation of the state, like one
.
One example.
I maybe Paula can give somemore details on this, but I
believe that when soda startedthat uh, new Mexico and Texas
were the same um association andso they had that whole it well,

(01:16:52):
and I think oklahoma, and so itwas averaging at all and it
made it to where new mexico it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
There I don't think that they have a mountain below
six points and very few beloweight there, if I, if I recall
correctly I haven't reallychecked into it too closely but,
um, because of that average,because then they separated, the
association separated, but theykept the points the same oh,

(01:17:23):
interesting okay yeah, I thinkthere's, I think, the I, the
general idea and I I did not getinvolved early enough to be
aware of the specifics when thewhole system was spun up
originally, because not everystate came up at the same time
and, as Amy mentioned, therewere some states that were
combined in a single associationthat the points allocated to

(01:17:49):
any one summit reflect not thedifficulty of getting to the
summit but are more tied to howhigh the summit is.
So a higher summit has morepoints, a lower summit has fewer
.
Now, that said, you may havesome one-pointers there, eric,
that are higher than mysix-pointers in Wisconsin.

(01:18:10):
I mean, I haven't looked, butthat's a possibility and I think
that ties into Amy's point oflooking at what the general
elevation is throughout thestate, and I'm sure there was
something more than justarbitrariness that went into
that decision.
There are some people I've heardof some people, and they

(01:18:32):
generally come from the westernstates, where things are a lot
taller and more challenging whohave suggested that, with some
seriousness, that you know sodashould be re-evaluated and it
really should only be.
You know stuff over a certainaltitude and this, and that

(01:18:53):
should only be.
You know stuff over a certainaltitude and this and that um
and uh.
You know, I understand that, Ithink it would.
Um, I think there are stillchallenges.
I mean, the summits in themidwest probably don't tap 2 000
feet, but do them in februaryand, believe me, you will get a
workout.
You don't want to plan, youwill want to plan and be careful
because if you're not, theywon't find you until the spring.

(01:19:17):
I'm serious about that.
But it's not the hazard, it'snot the difficulty, it's the
relative height.
So I have some sympathy withthat.
I just think it misses, I think, the bigger point of summits on
the air, which was to provide areasonable way of defining
summits as widely as we can sothat we encourage the maximum

(01:19:40):
amount of participation.
It was not until the last fiveyears that, believe it or not,
lo and behold, two summitssprouted in Iowa, which, believe
it or not, is not nearly asflat as most of Nebraska.
I think there are some summitsin Nebraska but more in the
Scotts Bluff area, but they havetwo in Iowa.

(01:20:01):
But I think, again, it's aneffort to reasonably expand that
part of the hobby, to encourageparticipation as much as
possible.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Is there a summit in every state?

Speaker 3 (01:20:13):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
There are five states .

Speaker 3 (01:20:16):
I believe that do not have summits.
Rhode Island, florida, surprise.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
That's what I was thinking.

Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
Louisiana, I think Kansas and Delaware might be the
other two.
I have that in a presentationsomewhere but I don't offhand
remember if I've got that wholelist correct.
But there are five stateswithout any.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
Yeah, because that really kind of you know, you
think like Florida is a prettypopulated state.
That takes a lot ofparticipation away if you're
living in Florida, unless youtravel.

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
Well, and Eric, to your point where you say you've
got all these one-pointers.
I mean, a couple of years agoat dayton I was at a dinner
where, um, a guy became aware Iwas doing soda and that I had,
um, I don't know if I had two,one or two mountain goats at
that point, but he said to me,how do you do that from the the

(01:21:08):
Midwest?
And my answer to him was Ismiled, I said a lot of travel,
yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:21:15):
Well, I mentioned that.
You know a couple of our topchasers, which I don't know if
you're familiar with the term,but they, a thousand points of
chasing, gets the title of shacksloth, and we have many Shack
Sloths and you know they're justas important.
And two of our top in well,north America, if not the world,

(01:21:40):
live in Kansas W0MNA Gary andW0ERI Martha.
Their husband, wife, andthey're a couple of our most
reliable chasers and theyactually did get their mountain
goat.
But there's not a single.
There's not a single mountainin kansas.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
Uh, n6ara did a presentation Ican't remember where it was it,
uh, maybe in california for aclub and he he generated a
couple of AI images of you knowshack sloths and mountain goats
and they were pretty cool.
So I was like, yeah, that wasdefinitely worth putting on a
shirt.

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
So, eric, there is a you should if you're interested,
and Todd as well, and Paul whenhe's back home, not flying not
coming out of airplanes andgetting tangled up in his chute.
Reach out to BobAlphaCharlie1Zulu.
Bob actually hosts an annual W1campout, conveniently for you

(01:22:47):
guys in New Hampshire, oh wow,and I've gone to it once because
it's almost a two-day plusdrive.
It's two days of hard drivingfor me to get there from where I
live.
But some of the mostchallenging hiking I have ever
done was those summits in NewHampshire, and these were not

(01:23:10):
one-pointers either.
I I joked with bob, I saidcorsage did, yeah, did the did
the eastern part of the countryforget about the concept of
switchbacks?
You start hiking and and, and,not only that, but most, yeah,
you.
You start out and it's a littlebit flat, maybe a slight

(01:23:31):
incline, and then suddenly it'slike somebody installed the
elevator, except it's notmotorized, and you're headed
straight up and not just for amile or so.
There's a lot of summits in thesoutheast part of the country,
in North Georgia, in Virginia,in Tennessee, in North Carolina,
where you may have a steepincline, but you know, know,

(01:23:52):
many of them are a mile, a mileand a half, two miles.
No, in new hampshire minimumthree miles one way in this
avenue and then heaven forbid ifit rains.
I remember coming down off ofone summit where it started
raining when we were operatingup top and as we walked back
everything was just slippery, ascan be with the rock.
Oh yeah, the tree sucks forwater, grabbing your boots and I

(01:24:16):
just remember thinking tomyself please, just let me get
back in one piece, please,please.
But I I think prior, just ayear or so before then, I'd
actually broken an ankle in theUpper Peninsula hiking to a
summit and I thought at the timeI just had very, very badly
sprained it.
So I spent the rest of the weekhiking to all these other

(01:24:41):
summits I had planned to do andmade some changes so that, you
know, I wasn't going to injuremy ankle anymore.
When I got home, a friend ofmine said you really should get
that checked out, and I did.
They x-rayed it and it wasbroken.
Um, but you know, so you got tobe careful.
But so I was coming down off ofthis one in new hampshire
thinking I don't want to do thisagain.

(01:25:02):
Um, but so you've got some highpointers there.
I mean, you've got a lot ofreally challenging high point
summits that I don't want to saythey're in your backyard, but
they're a heck of a lot closerto you than the closest summits
I have you can go anywhere innew hampshire within a two-hour
drive.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
Yeah, yeah, we uh, you know we have mount
washington, which is the highestpeak on the east coast, and
when I was in high school Ididn't know you could drive up
it, and my buddy and I decidedto hike up it.
And it was August and we gotlike just we're just about
getting over the tree line, andthere were like little trees
like maybe, you know, maybe acouple feet, and a cloud came

(01:25:40):
over, it started snowing andsleeting and raining and all of
a sudden like and the fog camein.
You couldn't see anything and Iliterally was like grabbing
onto this tree and like waterwas rushing over my head.
I'm like I'm going to die.
And then it blew by.
You know it was over with andthe sun clears and we were

(01:26:01):
literally 100 feet from thiscabin which is like a rest area,
right before you get to thesummit, and I see a truck, truck
down there and I'm like wow,they must have helicoptered a
truck.
And then I get to the top andthere's all these tourists, all
these kids running around.
I was like you could havedriven up this thing.
The one thing I remember aboutthat hike was you start going

(01:26:24):
like vertical and they had likelogs like embedded into the
earth.
And I remember like on all,like using my hands and feet
climbing up to just to get herover this like hump.

Speaker 3 (01:26:37):
I was like, wow, that's crazy yeah, well, mount
washington, of course is isnotorious for the variable
weather that can be encounteredif you hike up there, and
there's many people that havebeen either severely injured or
lost their lives because theydid either made a bad decision
to go out that day because theydidn't check the weather or they

(01:26:58):
were not prepared for whatcould happen.
I mean, I'm astounded you'resitting thinking snow in august.
That place really is dangerousyeah, it happens they say.

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
They say, uh like mount washington has some of the
one of the harshest conditions.
It also has I think it has therecord for the top winds in the
earth on earth and uh, yeah, itcan get pretty.
They send scientists up thereand they stay up there in the
winter and they, you know thoseguys try to come out and they
can barely like they're strappedin and uh, it just ice is over

(01:27:30):
and you know, there's likethere's snow and ice on it.
I'd say like probably 10 monthsout of the year, at some point,
you know, maybe July, august,it's not, but by the end of
September, october, it's back tosnow.

Speaker 3 (01:27:42):
Right Right, there's also some that's not too far off
, in Pennsylvania, in upstateNew York, also some pretty
challenging stuff there.
I I'm on my way to this campout for w1, I stopped and camped
a couple of nights in new yorkand did some summits now.
Granted, it was raining again.

(01:28:03):
It was like this whole systemthat got caught up in the
northeast part of the country.
Um, but you, there was somechallenging hikes there too.

Speaker 4 (01:28:12):
I got a question, all right.
So, knowing only about summitsin New Hampshire, having not
done summits anywhere else,there's a couple that I've been
looking at where you couldeasily make it a couple days
where you, you hike one summitand then you go ridgeline to

(01:28:34):
ridgeline and and you can getmaybe three, um, but I mean
you're talking about miles andmiles and miles.
So when you guys are going upand doing your summits, like
what are you looking at likestandard kind of mileage of of
what you're actually hiking?

Speaker 3 (01:28:56):
maybe you want to take a shot at that first oh, I
mean around here there's a lotof variables.

Speaker 5 (01:29:03):
I mean they're like, like paul was saying, we have
plenty of drive-ups.
You know the two that I didyesterday were both drive-ups.
You know both of them haveequipment up there like radar
dome and lookouts and stuff, andbut then we also have, you know
, we have so much public land inOregon, you know it's it's more

(01:29:25):
than half public land so, and alot of it is wilderness.
If it's wilderness there's noroads.
So I would say that my average,just because of my choice and
my limits, I'd say, is probablythree or four miles round trip,

(01:29:56):
but there are plenty out therethat are probably 12 or so round
trip.
I mean that's, I mean you can.
There's many like what you'retalking about with going
mountain to mountain.
There's some great areas withinthe wilderness areas or, like
you might remember, graybackMountain, like grants, yeah, the
high point of josephine county.
There's a great trail calledthe boundary trail that goes

(01:30:18):
from grayback.
You go up grayback and there'sa cabin up there.
There's, you know it's allmining country, old gold mining,
and the boundary trail goes up,basically the um at the saddle,
just below the saddle of allthose mountains, clear into
california, so that's one.
One thing that I've had on mylist of thinking of doing is

(01:30:41):
doing a three like at threemountains in a couple days there
I think some of part of theanswer to your question depends
on what kind of terrain you'redealing with.

Speaker 3 (01:30:55):
So a summit to access the summit, where there may be
two or three miles of hiking andit's a gradual ascent, is very
different from, you know, onethat's got a very steep ascent,
is very different from onethat's got a lot of up and down
before you finally get to thesummit.
The longest one I've done, Ithink, was actually a 12-mile

(01:31:17):
round trip in Missouri.
There's an area in Missourithat's actually a great place to
go activate summits, partlybecause it's just beautiful.
You're on and off the OzarkTrail there and the summits are
actually geographically fairlyclose to each other, so it's a
little bit easier to drive fromsummit to summit to knock off

(01:31:41):
two or three in a day.
And the one that has the12-mile round trip is called
Prophet Mountain.
At the time I did it there wasonly one other person who had
activated it at the time and Isuspect part of the reason was
the distance.
And I remember doing someresearch on this one because I
had taken a trip down to thispart of Missouri, which is like
an hour south of St Louis, andfound a lot of references to the

(01:32:06):
trail having a lot of anklerollers.
So there's a there's a fairlydense leaf cover just from
leaves that have fallen from thetrees and having a lot of ankle
rollers.
So there's a fairly dense leafcover just from leaves that have
fallen from the trees andapparently a lot of rocks
underneath.
And this was within.
This was like four months afterI had broken my ankle, so I was
already pretty well rehabbed,but I was still occasionally
wearing a foot brace.
So I thought to myself do Ireally wanna do this?

(01:32:26):
Ankle rollers probably not agreat idea, but I thought let's
try it.
Let's get out there on thetrail, because you've probably
seen this happen before.
Somebody describes something andif you don't know that somebody
, they might be describing it ina way that you would agree with
or that you would disagree with, and the only way to know for
sure is to go out yourself.
So I went out there and Istarted the hike early in the

(01:32:48):
day so I would have enough timeto complete it.
And it actually wasn't bad atall, and part of the reason that
I could do it is, while therewas some elevation gain and loss
, it wasn't huge.
I wasn't doing like 2,000 feetup and 3,000 feet down, okay, so
that makes a big difference aswell.
And so I think what you need todo and what I often do, at

(01:33:11):
least when I'm planning whatsummits I want to do is I'm
going to look at how muchelevation gain and how quickly
that occurs.
Is it, you know, a thousandfeet in half a mile, or is it a
thousand feet over two and ahalf miles?

Speaker 5 (01:33:25):
That makes a big difference in the decision that
I make and how many I might do,or how long it's going to take
me to do that one Another bigfactor for my area and I didn't
realize that there was such adifference between, like
Southern Oregon and some of theother areas of Portland, seattle

(01:33:48):
.
But there's no trails herereally, and so when you don't
have a trail, like aneight-miler on a trail, that's
probably fine for me, but youcould have a one-miler straight
up.
No trail through the bushes.
It's just as hard yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):
I can imagine that you know, and I think part of
the challenge with those isbecause you don't have a trail.
I learned this almost the hardway, um activating um out in
nevada.
So you know you may have atrail that goes so far and then
you have to go off trail andit's not a big deal because,

(01:34:31):
unlike, say, in the midwest orin the southeast part of the
country, when you bushwhackthere's no bushes to whack.
I mean it's pretty open.
The drawback to that is there'sno bushes to whack and it's
pretty open.
I mean it all looks pretty muchthe same and you turn around
and it's like, wow, which waydid I come up?

(01:34:54):
So there there's some uniquechallenges when you've got that
situation.
There's part of it that's easyand there's part of the part of
it that, if you don't think itthrough ahead of time, you could
end up going off in totally thewrong direction.
You really have to maintain alot of directional awareness and
situational awareness so thatyou know where you are, you know
where your compass points are.

(01:35:15):
That could involve, you know,recording your traps on the GPS
device, noting where you are ina topographic map, taking note
of certain things that areunique.

Speaker 5 (01:35:28):
Taking a good dog.

Speaker 3 (01:35:30):
Well, I don't have a dog, but if I did, that would be
a good idea.

Speaker 5 (01:35:35):
Well, that's one skill that I learned.
I mean, I lost my dog a fewmonths ago, but I started
noticing sometimes she would getbehind me when we'd be headed
back to the car.
Sometimes she would get behindme when we'd be headed back to
the car and it finally dawned onme if she's leading, she's on

(01:35:58):
our track.
If she's behind me, she has noclue where I'm going.
In other words, I'm off trackBecause I'm following her own
path back, and so I learned toyou know okay.

Speaker 3 (01:36:12):
Maggie, where do we go?

Speaker 4 (01:36:13):
Help me get home.

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
I've actually had there was one summit I did in um
, northern wisconsin, I call it.
I don't know if it's calledofficially this way, but I call
it the bayfield peninsula.
There's a tourist town calledbayfield, up close to the tip
and right off of Bayfield arethe Apostle Islands and it kind
of sticks out into Lake Superiorand these are not high pointers

(01:36:36):
at all.
But this one summit has got avery dense growth on it.
I mean, the forest on that isso dense that you feel like
you're hacking.
You feel like you need amachete to hack through when
you're bushwhacking the lastpart in order to get into the
activation zone.
And one time I activated it itwas a, the weather was, um, it

(01:36:59):
was like a, a soft rain off andon coming down.
And I remember taking off mypack and setting up, trying to
set up my antenna in the midstof all this growth.
And then I turned around and Irealized, oh my god, where's my
pack?
The growth was so dense Icouldn't find at first where the
heck everything else was.
And when I sat down to activatethat summit I could hear the

(01:37:22):
rain.
I never felt a drop.
I never saw a drop.
It was that dense, it was thewildest thing.
I'm hoping they've logged thatoff since then.

Speaker 1 (01:37:31):
I have to get back out there and check wow, okay,
well, so let's kind of shiftgears a little bit, because I,
you know, one of the things thatkind of led me to uh your door,
amy, and and and paula forcoming on um, is the article
that was in january's qst.
So you got to go back in the wayback machine a little bit, but,

(01:37:53):
uh, amy, uh contributed anarticle that I thought was a
phenomenal.
It was definitely, uh, anexperience that, uh, I had read
and I was like, wow, man, this,this, this is definitely cool to
see that there are a group ofladies who are out doing this
stuff more so that they'rethey're way like, you know, I'm
like, kind of like at the basehere in terms of, like, my soda

(01:38:14):
experience and hiking and beingoutdoors, to seeing where
they're at, and I'm just liketotally just enamored by them
and I'm like, oh, we gotta havethem on to have them, you know,
share their conversation andshare their experience and their
conversations a little bit.
So, amy, kind of talk a littlebit.
A little bit that article andand and uh, maybe kind of
dovetail into a little bit of uh, you know what, what we call
the, what you've dubbed thequeens of mountain, queens of

(01:38:35):
the mountain event and and kindof elaborate more uh into the,
the yls and soda and and thattype of experience okay, um,
yeah, well, we we were both pauland I were um, we had a guy who
reached out to us, a managedassociation manager reached out

(01:38:58):
to us asking about getting morewomen involved.

Speaker 5 (01:39:02):
And I think at least I had my hands full and stuff,
partly because of this camp outand that was top of my plate,
and when we did the camp out,that was top of my plate and
when we did the camp out therewas plenty of women there, and
so we decided to do the um, thesummit together, eight of us up
on the mountain, and it was justum, it was sort of just routine

(01:39:26):
for me.
You know, I don't, I was morethe organizer, just you know.
Okay, let's get up there andget back down and how we do the
radios and stuff.
But to some of the women it was, it was really moving.
They hadn't been, they hadn'toperated with another woman
before.
Some of them had barely been onthe radio without their old man

(01:39:49):
right by their side.
Some of them I think it was thefirst time they had been on a
mountain and their old man isthe one calling them back.
Just these little things thatmade it a bit special.
And we even had one YL who shehad only been licensed, I think,

(01:40:14):
a week, you know, and and so Iwas just just thinking about
that.
And you know, you know what,how can we get people to?
Um, okay, I'll go back a littlebit.
I think that I can't say allwomen, but myself and many that

(01:40:36):
I know have problems doingactivities that there isn't a
reason, a purpose, and men Ithink it's stereotypically a
little easier.
I mean like sitting and fishingand catching nothing for many
hours.

Speaker 1 (01:40:51):
I can't that I can't either, so it doesn't matter,
but yeah, I get it it's castingpractice it's a social activity
with beer drinking.

Speaker 3 (01:41:01):
The fishing line is incidental it's the bonus it's
same with sitting in a shack.

Speaker 5 (01:41:08):
it's kind of it's like I have trouble just sitting
, especially once I got hookedon poda and and are just
portable operations and soda andeverything and um, so I see a
there.
I mean you guys are mainly podaoperators.
I mean you probably see thatthere is a large number of women
getting in radio, goingportable and um.

(01:41:31):
So I just came up with the ideaof doing this special events,
call signs and doing it kind oflike route 66 or the, um, what
is it?
12 days of christmas, you know,it's where you're chasing the
13 colonies, yeah, yeah, I meanjust to try and get at least a

(01:41:52):
little bit more activity in eachregion across the states.
And so that's how that cameabout.
And Paula and I crossed pathsand thought you know, let's do
it and let's make this a funevent that people want to come
and join, and that's what wehope to continue.

(01:42:14):
I mean we're downsizing kind ofthe way that we're doing it.
In a way, we're not going to dothe special events, we just
want women to come and makepeople know that they are wilds
up on the mountain doing thisand we encourage them to bring
another woman along um, you know, especially new operators, and

(01:42:39):
just inspire now you just beinspired of how you, how many
people you may be inspiring, andyou don't know it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:49):
Well, that's funny, as you've mentioned it, because
we do other activities, similarkind of like bringing the youth
in and other public.
You know events for ham radioin general.
But like I I find it veryinteresting is we do have a lot
of wiles in our club, um, as anexample, but a lot of them, you
know, they do not all kind of.
It's kind of interestingbecause I like I want them to

(01:43:12):
get together and start doingmore.
So it's like I try to findfolks like yourself who are like
, hey, we're just doing theseactivities, so like I feed them
a lot of those things.
I'm like, hey, you know thisperson over here, you know he's
doing this whole activity or youknow.
So I try to plug into likethings like the, you know the,
the yl's, um, uh, why am I knowthe, the, the YLs, um, uh, why
am I forgetting?
Uh, the network, the, not thenet?

(01:43:33):
Well, it's a YLs, uh, networkor club, uh, why am I forgetting
?
Uh, yeah, yeah.
Thank you, yrl.
Um, and just trying to findladies that can you know, who
are in our club, who I knowcould plug in in that way,
because I feel like it's justimportant for us guys, you know,
to continue to practice, aspaul says, casting um, you know,
in the ham radio side.
But I find it's even moreimportant, because you know, to

(01:43:55):
have those connections, becausewe had couples, um, and we've
interviewed a few on our showbefore that.
They're big poda people andthey like the poda power if you
ever heard of poda powder, uh,or uh, the ham radio duo, a
couple and you know they're bigcw guys and you know they like
doing photo parks and it's justlike getting more couples out in
that kind of thing and justlike really just getting more

(01:44:16):
people, you know, in the hobbyand and playing radio, which is
really my biggest, you know,thing is I want to see them
start doing more of that.

Speaker 5 (01:44:22):
So you know, I applaud you for just picking up
the torch and running it,because that's always the
toughest part right To, you know, just kind of organize it Right
and I and I think that um, bothPaula and I like um, when we
were first talking about it, Imean we were both kind of like,

(01:44:42):
you know, is this really needed?
Because both of us have had avery positive, welcoming
environment in radio.
I mean's there's always been,you know, a few bad apples out
there, but um and I, you know Imyself I'm used to being
involved in some outdoorsythings.

(01:45:03):
That is already male dominantand you know it's just I'm used
to it and um, but through thecamp out, through when we were
first reaching out to people toto take on the special events,
call signs, finding people toagree to that, you discover that
not all women have had thatexperience and some have had

(01:45:27):
poor experiences.
Um, I mean, just recently I wasat a local club and it was
still, you know, there were somehere we have these young new
ops and their mother with themand there was just some really
inappropriate misogynisticcomments being made.
It's like, you know, we got toget over this and make an

(01:45:48):
environment that's welcoming andI think for some women it does
take that all woman group to get, you know, to take that first
step totally, yeah, I mean, andit's, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:46:03):
It's tough, because if you're like, uh, you know
you're only one of three femalesin a club, a lot of times it's
like you're not always going towant to step up into that whole,
you know, larger group of menwho are, like you know, been
doing it forever.
And it's like I always make tryto make space for that because I
think it's important, becauseyou guys, you guys sometimes are
way better operators than us.

(01:46:24):
I, you know, I've sat in frontof a number of uh, we actually
have two ladies in our club, uh,uh, anna, who's uh, you know,
she's um phenomenal cw operatorand like I sat down next to her
one time at a field day andshe's like at 45, 50 words a
minute and like not even likelike banging stuff off and I'm

(01:46:44):
just like my jaw's wide open.
I've never seen a picture ofmyself like looking like I just
like what the heck am Iwitnessing here, and she's just
like no big deal, like this isno problem, and she's like kind
of like shy about I'm like, butyou know, wait a minute here,
let me introduce you to thisother female who's just starting
to learn morse code and likethey just hooked up and like you
know it just kind of like justunfurled and so.

(01:47:04):
So that makes me moreinterested to see that you know
that stuff happening, becauseyou know I I'm sorry like this
is not a male dominated hobby.
It's always been like thatgrowing up as a kid.
But I never wanted it that way.
I wanted my girlfriends to comesee how cool ham radio was and
be part of it.
But you know I had too manyolder adults.
Well, yeah, that's a differentstory.
My daughter's a ham radiooperator.

(01:47:25):
She went and got her ticket.
She, you know she loves doingit.
Um, she's in her 20s, so she's,you know, off doing chasing
boys in her, you know her life.
But she'll come back around andwant to do ham radio again.
But, um, you know she does thatstuff and she enjoys, you know,
hanging out in that hobby.
But uh, you know.
So that that's always important, I think you know.
And so you guys, you know, aregood.
So you, the first camp out, youguys started was this january,

(01:47:46):
right, or just prior before thisjanuary.
You guys scheduled another onecoming up soon.

Speaker 5 (01:47:51):
Oh, no, we the camp out, the oregon camp outs.
I started those in um gosh, Ican't remember a long time or
pre-cold or after covid I thinkit was 22 was our first and
because 23 that that was oursecond one.
So this year will will be thethe fourth and we'll be doing it

(01:48:14):
at the same place that we didit in the 23.
Um, okay, yeah, but I meanthat's that's sort of separate
from queens of the mountain, butI mean the name it was just.
You know I if you read somemountaineering stuff and well,
and also one of our um avid sodaoperators that's is the term.

(01:48:35):
King of the mountain is prettycommon in hiking and summiting
and stuff like that, but youdon't really hear queens.
So I mean I kind of got thatfrom seeing um n7kom's call sign
a lot, because you live here inoregon, yeah now.

Speaker 1 (01:48:50):
So you, what other activities are you guys kind of
organizing or trying toinfluence or encourage others to
do?
Maybe you can kind of, you know, share some of that and you
know, uh, where other people cankind of plug in.
If you know, we have a bunch offemale listeners listening, I
know, um, so I'm sure they'revery interested to see how they
can plug in or maybe there'sother avenues or outlets that
they can plug in locally aroundhere that you guys know of well,

(01:49:10):
let me just mention there isone thing that we we've changed
with queens of the mountain forthis year that we're hoping will
encourage even more yls toparticipate.

Speaker 3 (01:49:23):
When we did it last year, um, you know, we weren't
really sure how it was going tobe received, how much
participation we would get, andI think, partly by way of
encouraging that participation,we encourage people to get the

(01:49:45):
special one-by-one call signsthat are available in the United
States.
But we got actually someinternational coverage even last
year for the event, and thisyear, for the first time, the
event will be open to YLs aroundthe world.
So we will not be emphasizingthe one-by-one calls.
If somebody wants to do that inthe US, they can do it.
If there's an equivalent inanother country, they can do
that.
But we're encouraging peoplesimply to get on the air, use

(01:50:06):
hashtags to call attention to it.
But it's now international inflavor.
So, in terms of encouragingeven more yls to participate, uh
, we're looking forward to whatwe hope will be a lot of um, uh,
yls outside of the unitedstates that will uh, see the
opportunity and uh andparticipate, whether it's
chasers or or activators verycool, and so what's?

(01:50:26):
So if we had?

Speaker 1 (01:50:27):
somebody who was interested and wanted to kind of
follow up with you guys.
What's so if we had somebodywho was interested and wanted to
kind of follow up with you guys, what's the easiest way to
reach out to you guys via?
Because I noticed I'm lookingup at the soda reflector.
I just happened to saw a postup there about that.
But, um, is there a you knowbetter way?
Who's what's the best way toreach out to you guys that they
want to participate or get moreinfo on it?

Speaker 5 (01:50:44):
and probably are the qrz email so from email is
probably the best.
That's one thing we might andthat's a good thing for us to be
reminded of might put somethingon our QRZ page in reference to
it.
That was one benefit of havingthis special events.

(01:51:06):
We could have call signs.
We could have the QRZ pages forthose calls.
So this year we've mainly we'remainly using the reflector and
just, you know, trying to spreadthe word right now, um, in
terms of the uh, the kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:51:25):
So it's one weekend in june, so just kind of give us
kind of a little basics of it.
So someone who's never heard ofit before you know, is
interested in what.

Speaker 5 (01:51:32):
When does it occur and what kind of is the whole
premise behind it um, well, it'sto, of course, you know, get on
the air as uh for for sodabeing a yl.
But then we have the special umof what would you call them?
Paula?

Speaker 3 (01:51:59):
What we did last year , and we tinkered with it a bit
because of the internationalaspect and we wanted to make
sure that nobody in any one partof the world necessarily got a
big advantage over what wedefined as achievements.
So we didn't want people tothink of this so much as a
contest, because that does put asomewhat different tenor on
things.
We wanted to encourageparticipation.
We have about six achievementsthat we've defined and they

(01:52:21):
could be something as simple asmaking five or more contacts
with YL activators, having afirst-time-ever soda activation
by a YL, having a contactbetween two YLs, each of which
are on a summit, just to givethree examples.
And so what we did was we gavecertificates to everybody who at

(01:52:47):
least qualified for one ofthose achievements.
And generally we'll have thesame approach this year and
we'll probably have a specialaward given.
It will be tied to the numberof achievements, but not
determined solely by the numberof achievements.
There will be some.
We will be looking we're notgoing to look at it arbitrarily,

(01:53:10):
but we will be looking at otheraspects of individual
participation in deciding anaward that actually is named
after a woman who, with herhusband, activated a bunch of
summits, I think got to mountaingoat twice and in all of her

(01:53:30):
operating you would never, everhave guessed she was blind.
What, oh, wow k1 yeah k1, lima,india, zulu, liz and uh, she and
her husband ron.
They lived in.
Ron still lives in tennessee,in fact I just saw him a couple
of weeks ago.
He was at the W4 campout.

(01:53:51):
He and his wife would goactivate together.
I was very honored.
I had a chance to meet Lizseveral years ago.
Sadly she passed away aboutthree years ago, but we thought
it would really, you know, Ihave to give credit here, she's
too generous to say it, I haveto give credit here, she's too
generous to say it but thiswhole concept of this event is

(01:54:13):
really Amy's vision andbrainchild.
She thought of this, catalyzedby this campout experience in
Oregon, and she also came upwith the special award and
naming it after Liz.
I've just kind of been part ofit to help her realize that
vision.

(01:54:34):
But it really is Amy's vision,that's cool.

Speaker 5 (01:54:37):
I would like to come up with these ideas, but I'm not
that great of sorting thingsout and organizing computers and
stuff and Paula has been therock for that.

Speaker 1 (01:54:49):
Well, you understand, we're the right, right people.
It's like not everybody has theright set of tools.
You've got all of the idea,you're the idea man, you just
need someone to have theexecution in some sense.

Speaker 5 (01:54:58):
Yeah, so I totally get that and I wanted to
reiterate with liz.
I mean I never met her, but Iwas always inspired from when I
first started, and I'm not evensure if I ever had a QSO with
her because of our timedifferences, but I think that
she actually achieved three-timemountain goat.
Oh, yeah, and I think that herlast trips out on the mountain

(01:55:26):
were only, I think, weeks beforeshe passed away.

Speaker 1 (01:55:30):
Wow, right up to the final end.
That's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:55:34):
That's dedication.

Speaker 5 (01:55:35):
Ron was pretty honored that we did that for Liz
.

Speaker 1 (01:55:41):
That was very cool.
That is awesome.
That just makes this wholeprogram, this whole brainchild,
this grassroots thing that muchbetter.
It's like that's pretty cool.

Speaker 5 (01:55:52):
I think the woman have a little bit different
perspective on stuff a lot oftimes.
And, um, I mean, I learned thatactually with my first summit
is I shared I really didn't usefacebook much and I decided to
share it on there on the sodapage and it was like probably
about a few dozen photos ofwildflowers and people are like

(01:56:19):
where is this?
So somebody told me this.
He said, you know, this isreally cool, because usually
it's just these guys, you know,with their arm up in the air up
on top of the mountain, beingproud to get up there, and it's
like, oh, look at this flowerit's totally okay.

Speaker 1 (01:56:35):
We have a lady in our club uh, jean, she's big cw nut
, she's a music teacher, pianoteacher by trade, and and uh,
she does youtube videos on uh,what is it cw?
She does a cw jokes and shejust records them all over Morse
code and some people are like Idon't get it.

(01:56:55):
I'm like that's just quirky,it's funny, it's good.
I can't always understand itbecause I'm not a great CW guy,
but at the same time it's stillher way of showing how important
that aspect of the hobby is.
So it's cool and her quirkinessCool, awesome, okay.
Do you know that aspect of thehobby is?
So it's cool and her quirkinessso cool, awesome, okay.

Speaker 5 (01:57:15):
So you guys have any other things you want to throw
in?
Any questions?

Speaker 1 (01:57:17):
uh, june 7th through 8th is it oh, because it's on
well, oh, this is may 2024th,okay, so I'm looking at an old
reflector post.

Speaker 3 (01:57:26):
Sorry, be on the right so the important thing is
um, while it's not a contestparticularly because of the
international flavor while itstarts on june 7, as we know,
june 7 in the us on zulu timeactually starts sometime on
friday.
So it's important that peopleknow that the contest starts at

(01:57:51):
zero zulu on june 7 and runsbasically through 2359 zulu on
june 8.
So think of it like cq,worldwide, cw contest the
weekend after thanksgiving,usually usually um, and that
always starts friday night andruns through sometime in, you
know, sunday afternoon.

Speaker 1 (01:58:11):
So in this case that's the time frame we're
talking about now questionnumbers wise, do you guys keep
track roughly last year how manyyou guys had participate, or
did you have a rough idea howmany custom uh vanity calls you
had?

Speaker 5 (01:58:27):
well, I think we had, we had the a call, somebody
operating in all but one area of, because what we did was we
actually did one like W1Q, w2q,w3q and so forth, and then
because, especially some areas,like back in your, your regions,

(01:58:51):
there wasn't a whole lot ofwomen, um, but then here in
Oregon, california, there was alot that we, we chose timeframes
to share the call sign.

Speaker 3 (01:59:03):
So there is like a sign up Google deck sign up
sheet on a spreadsheet.
Don't let that fool you.

Speaker 1 (01:59:08):
There's a bunch of radio ladies that are radio
enthusiasts.
They're just closet radioenthusiasts because they've been
.
You know there's been a lot ofbad.
We'll say, you know,misogynistic guys just basically
try to say you know, my wifejust got their ticket because I
told her to go kind of get aticket.
But I know a lot of them wantto to get out and start doing
more of the hobby and you know,I try to always leave the door
wide open for you know them tocome in and do whatever they're

(01:59:31):
interested in.
But, uh, you know it, it takes alot of changing because, you
know, we're new england, we'rethe frozen chosen, so it takes a
long time for anybody to kindof get around to, you know,
realize that there's a differentway to look at something.
So it's all cool, so cool,awesome, all right.
Well, uh, you guys got any uhlast things you want to throw at

(01:59:51):
them.
Because I, you know, Idefinitely think this is, uh,
it's been an awesome experiencefor, uh, you know me
specifically and just to hearthat you know this is, this is
happening and uh, you know,definitely want to help support
uh, as much as we can yeah, Ithink it's great.

Speaker 2 (02:00:04):
I mean it's just and I learned a little bit of some
what's on the air too.
So thank you you for that andyeah, it was a lot of it's a lot
of good stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:00:13):
It's great to meet you guys.
I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 (02:00:19):
I would just say, eric, you mentioned, you know,
your limited soda experience andall I would say is every single
person in soda, amy and meincluded, we're exactly where
you are now.
So you know, don't let thatdiscourage any of you from
getting involved.

(02:00:40):
It's like any other activity.
You ramp up into it and thegood news is, like just about
every other aspect of ham radio,there's plenty of people that
are out there that will mentoryou, as they've mentored me to
this day.

Speaker 1 (02:00:52):
So yeah, that would be paul, he's, he's got a goal
of uh, at least what working atleast 10 of the 4 000 footers
this year, or whatever yournumber is.
So I'm gonna be tagging along.
So, yeah, we'll, we'll beworking on it.

Speaker 4 (02:01:05):
I appreciate the encouragement stay with it, we
can chase you I just, I justwant to say um, you, you ladies,
are truly an inspiration.
Um, like, teamwork makes thedream work, and so kudos to you
guys for teaming up and andplaying on each other's

(02:01:25):
strengths.
Um, I, I, I hope that thisturns into a much bigger thing
and you get a lot more, a lotmore ladies.
Well, if you don't mind a fellatagging along, I I'd love to
join you on one of these summits, oh yeah you guys would be more
funner to play.

Speaker 5 (02:01:41):
You know, hang out and play yeah, the old man had,
I'd say, more fun than some ofthe women.
I mean the chasing.
I mean I've had so many peoplereach out.

Speaker 3 (02:01:54):
You know when are you going to do this again, and so
yeah, it's for everybody and beaware this is actually an
important point that I don'tthink we called out.
We talked about theseachievements and most of the
achievements are focused on theYL participants, but there is an

(02:02:15):
achievement that anybody,whether a YL or a guy, can get,
and that is working five or morefemale activators.
So, guys, when the event comesup, tune your radios up, look
for hashtag QOM, work thosestations and if you get five or
more, I will be sending you acertificate.

Speaker 1 (02:02:35):
Great, you have to definitely make that note.

Speaker 3 (02:02:39):
Yeah, you know, we, we, we ask people to just let us
know what what they think theyqualify for and SOTA itself.
I think and I think the same istrue for POTA For the most part
it runs on the honor system.
If I say I went to a summit andI worked these 10 people, you
know it doesn't work the wayLogbook of the World works and

(02:02:59):
some of the other morecompetitive things, and we work
this event the same way.
You know we figure you've gotto live with what you tell us.
So if you're willing to tell usthat you did that and we'll
accept it and you get yourcertificate.
So keep that in mind for thatweekend.

Speaker 1 (02:03:18):
Awesome Dude.
That was very cool guys, wellcool with that.
Well, we're going to kind ofwrap up today and again, thank
you, amy and Paula, for comingon and sharing with us, because
we are totally blown away by allthe stuff you guys are doing
and supporting YL's and thehobby and just getting out there
and conquering some big,freaking mountains.

(02:03:39):
All in all.
So thank you again for comingon and I'm glad we kind of got
this all worked out.
So with that let's wrap this up.
So thank you again for joiningLive Free and Ham and being part
of the community.
We truly appreciate you,everyone who supports the show,
and we can't thank all you guysenough.
And so always, if you want toconnect with us, you can head

(02:04:00):
over to our Discord server andjoin us in the conversation, and
the link will be over there andthis episode will be posted
there too as well.
So if you've got questions forSoda or Amy or Paula, feel free
to post them there and we'llmake sure we get those over to
those ladies and they can getyour answers back.
And, as always, pleasesubscribe to our YouTube channel

(02:04:21):
and that way you can catch uson all our live streams and all
of the awesome content that'sover here, including this
episode.
And, as always, if you feelcompelled, leave us a review on
our SMS link, uh, located in allour show notes, or you can
always use our voicemail numberat nine, seven, eight, two,
three, three, one, one, four,two.
And always you can support ourshow, uh, by joining our Patreon

(02:04:45):
or buy us, including the showitself.
You can head over tolivefreeandhamcom and check out
all of our shows, our latestinformation and swag, and thanks
again for listening, and, asalways, from all of us at Live
Free and Ham 7-3 guys 7-3.

Speaker 4 (02:05:03):
7-3.

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