[MSham] US W5 is SOTA approved.

[Mike Olbrisch]

US W5 is SOTA approved.

Beginning 1 July 2010, the US W5 call area will be approved for Summits on the
Air (SOTA) activation.  

To learn more about SOTA, check:  http://www.sota.org.uk/
http://www.sota.org.uk/AboutSOTA  and http://www.sota.org.uk/JoiningIn. 

The W5 call area consists of the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New
Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.  The states of Louisiana and Mississippi have no
SOTA qualified summits.  Arkansas has 124 qualified summits.  New Mexico has
1064 qualified summits.  Oklahoma has 57 qualified summits.  Texas has 447
qualified summits.  The total for the W5-SOTA area is 1692 qualified summits.

The W5-SOTA association Manager is Mike Olbrisch, KD9KC.  Mike lives in El Paso,
Texas.  Mike spent hundreds of hours over a 6-month period cataloging, checking
and listing the summits of each state, assembling them into regions within the
state, then writing the Association Reference Manual (ARM) for the entire
W5-area.  Mike can be reached at (mailto:mike-2007 at elp.rr.com).

The Arkansas Region manager is Jeff Sykes, K5VU.  Jeff lives in Jackson MS, but
graciously volunteered to take the Arkansas Region Manager's position until an
Arkansas station steps forward to volunteer.  Jeff can be reached at
(mailto:k5vu at arrl.net)  Thanks Jeff.  

New Mexico and Oklahoma currently have no Region Managers.  Any questions (or
volunteers) should contact Mike, KD9KC, at the above E-mail address.

The Texas Region Manager is Sean, KD6CUB.  Sean lives in El Paso, and can be
contacted at (mailto:kd6cub at arrl.net)  Thanks Sean.

Thanks to Ed, WA3WSJ for help writing the ARM.  Thanks Ed.

Special thanks go to John Kirk of www.listsofjohn.com.  Without John's help,
this association would have certainly taken months more to be completed, if at
all.  Thanks John.

Watch under http://www.sota.org.uk/Associations for the official release of the
ARM, and under http://www.sotadata.org.uk/ for the W5 summit data to be posted.

The W5-SOTA team hopes you enjoy this new facet of Amateur Radio.  So take a
hike!  And don't forget to bring your favorite radio along.  See you on the
summits.

Mike - KD9KC.
El Paso, Tx. 
M.A.R.I.E.
w5dpd.org

Molon labe. [mo-lone lah-veh] Google it...

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