The use of 146.52 MHz during the 14er event

Bob K0NR

Back in the early days of the 14er event, we just called on 146.52 MHz when using the 2m band.
This quickly overloaded the channel which became a huge mess. In particular, mountaintop stations within range of the major cities worked lots of flat land stations but could not hear the mountaintop stations to the west. Our conclusion was that we had to spread out a bit on the band. We tried a number of different approaches and eventually settled in on using 147.42 MHz and higher frequencies for the event.

However, standard SOTA practice is to call on the calling frequency (146.52 MHz) because that's where people are listening.
This email is to encourage you to not clog 146.52 MHz. Instead, use 147.42 MHz and move up from there to 147.45, 147.48, 147.51 MHz as things get busy.
If you need to call on 146.52 to find activity, go ahead. One thing I do is call on 146.52 and announce that I am listening on 147.42 MHz, trying to pull people over there.
I guarantee you that if we all hang out on one frequency, it will be a mess.

The other VHF/UHF calling frequencies aren't usually that busy during the event, so go ahead and use them.

Make sure your VHF/UHF FM radio has the appropriate frequencies in memory before you hit the trail.

More info here:

73 Bob K0NR