Ham Radio All Portable Discussion Zone
May 31, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min · 11 segments
Derek W7DLZ has earned the SOTA Mountain Goat award five times over and he's closing in on a sixth. Since his first activation in September 2021, Derek has operated from hundreds of summits across six…
a lot of people that i do activations with actually who are sideband guides will actually be operating with 100 watts so make up that difference yeah
Yeah, my friend Bobby, he's got several radios, but he'll use a G90 with 20 watts.
And 20 watts is a big difference from 5 to 10.
But yeah, sideband, I mean, I really should do more than I do.
But I don't do very much of it.
Yeah.
It sounds like you kind of have vetted out all the different ways in which you can operate and kind of have a set routine.
You have a set... uh antenna you have a set radio everything's kind of set for you and and you have some flexibility but you you sounds like you pretty much every activation you kind of know what you're going into you know what you're going to operate you know you know your mode you know your power you know your antenna you know your radio and the only variant is maybe the a little bit of who's going to be out there chasing you and what the band conditions are and um and maybe a little bit about the terrain and that's you know that you have to adjust for but other than that it's pretty straightforward right
Right.
Well, and the other problem we run into is, of course, cell phone coverage.
A lot of places we don't get cell phone coverage.
And sometimes if you move one or two feet, you get cell phone coverage that you didn't have, didn't know you had when you're operating all that.
And that's
happened to
me a number of times.
Yeah, so true.
Okay, well, so we're wrapping up here.
We're almost at the end, but what memories, just generally, you've done this now for almost five years.
What are some of your best memories that people could learn from who are listening in your portable operations? It doesn't have to be SOTA.
Give us a few of your lessons learned or some of your best advice and best memories that you've had in your soda experience.
Well, I do recommend to be mindful of
spares, spare cables especially.
Soda is hard on people.
It's hard on gear.
a lot of people that i do activations with actually who are sideband guides will actually be operating with 100 watts so make up that difference yeah
Yeah, my friend Bobby, he's got several radios, but he'll use a G90 with 20 watts.
And 20 watts is a big difference from 5 to 10.
But yeah, sideband, I mean, I really should do more than I do.
But I don't do very much of it.
Yeah.
It sounds like you kind of have vetted out all the different ways in which you can operate and kind of have a set routine.
You have a set... uh antenna you have a set radio everything's kind of set for you and and you have some flexibility but you you sounds like you pretty much every activation you kind of know what you're going into you know what you're going to operate you know you know your mode you know your power you know your antenna you know your radio and the only variant is maybe the a little bit of who's going to be out there chasing you and what the band conditions are and um and maybe a little bit about the terrain and that's you know that you have to adjust for but other than that it's pretty straightforward right
Right.
Well, and the other problem we run into is, of course, cell phone coverage.
A lot of places we don't get cell phone coverage.
And sometimes if you move one or two feet, you get cell phone coverage that you didn't have, didn't know you had when you're operating all that.
And that's
happened to
me a number of times.
Yeah, so true.
Okay, well, so we're wrapping up here.
We're almost at the end, but what memories, just generally, you've done this now for almost five years.
What are some of your best memories that people could learn from who are listening in your portable operations? It doesn't have to be SOTA.
Give us a few of your lessons learned or some of your best advice and best memories that you've had in your soda experience.
Well, I do recommend to be mindful of
spares, spare cables especially.
Soda is hard on people.
It's hard on gear.
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