Pikes Peak is a great summit for a SOTA activation. You can hike up, drive up, or take the cog railway to get to the top. Pikes towers over eastern Colorado and has an excellent radio horizon in all directions. It is easy to work a bunch of stations on 2m FM. With a bit of effort, you can work Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and New Mexico on VHF.
Fraser/MM0EFI was visiting from Scotland, operating here in the US as W0/M0EFI. Here’s his HF operating experience, with cameo appearances by Carey/KX0R, Christian/F4WBN, Elliot/K6EL, and Steve/WG0AT.
Now for the VHF fun on 2m FM. I happened to be on South Monarch Ridge (W0C/SP-058) that day and we completed a Summit-to-Summit contact on 146.52 MHz, at a distance of about 80 miles—easy contact using just HT’s on both ends.
Fraser, thanks for the fun videos from America’s Mountain.
73 Bob K0NR
Excellent success. Thanks for sharing.
Hi, Bob, enjoyed your Pikes Peak article, I’m KQ4HHL Matt. Thirty years ago, I brought my heliograph, light flashes seen easily 60 miles +! Did some work with these, I bet the VHF radio horizon is 120 miles or more..
Matthew,
Thanks for the note.
In this article, I estimated the optical horizon to the east from Pikes Peak as 120 miles.
https://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2011/02/vhf-distance-from-pikes-peak/
Bob K0NR