NA-SOTA Weekend and VHF Contesting

September 8-9 is the NA-SOTA Weekend and is also the ARRL VHF Contest. It's a
chance to make contacts and connections between SOTA and the VHF community. 

Getting four contacts on VHF from any SOTA summit should be easy this weekend - after you entertain the regular chasers on HF perhaps you'd consider moving to VHF. (You might find Péter, W7/HG1DUL, activating Mount Adams.) 

Note that most SSB activity uses horizontally polarized antennas while FM uses vertical - I've still had plenty of luck on 2m SSB with a 5/8 vertical, but try tipping that whip sideways to see if it makes a difference.

Know your grid square as that's the contest exchange - hopefully they'll give you a signal report too. See http://www.arrl.org/september-vhf for more information. The Oregon and  Idaho ARM have grid squares for each summit and so does sotadata.org  (http://www.sotadata.org.uk/summitReport.aspx).

Standard SSB calling frequencies are:

50.125 MHz

144.200 MHz

432.100 MHz

Standard FM calling frequencies are:

52.525 MHz

Don't use 146.52 FM for contest-like activity - perhaps try 146.55 or 146.58 

446.000 MHz

See these links for more information:

http://kc9bqa.com/?p=1700

http://www.k0nr.com/rwitte/vhf_contest.html