In November 2025 I activated 9 SOTA summits west of Johannesburg in the GP and NW regions of South Africa.
I contacted local hams who were immensely helpful in offering advice, summit access permission contacts (most are on private land) and operating tips. Two locals also kindly accompanied me on activations:
- Nov 1st: GP-016 with ZS6GL (see below), GP-024 and GP-008
- Nov 2nd: GP-015 with ZS6LZ
- Nov 4th: NW-037 and NW-039
- Nov 5th: GP-023 and NW-075
- Nov 6th: NW-041
Before arriving in South Africa I had contacted Adele ZS5APT who manages a very active Whatsapp group of over 150 SOTA/POTA activators and chasers. This was useful to announce my arrival and planned activations as well as self spotting on the day.
Graham (ZS6GL) gave me some useful advice on HF bands and frequencies, essential to know because South Aftica's geographic position in the world can make activtions difficult. Typically, operating from GP/NW regions in the North:
- 40m (7.090 MHz SSB) works well for chasers in the same regions
- 20m (14.285 MHz SSB) works well for longer distant contacts to ZS1 (Western Cape) and ZS5 (KwaZulu Natal) regions. Your dipole should be oriented South/South West to maximise gain towards Cape Town where there are several active chasers.
- 30m includes an SSB allocation in Africa, unlike in European band plans, so can be useful to cover the whole country (10,125 MHz) especially when propagation is compromised on the other band(s)
- It was also suggested not to use the portable /P suffix in my callsign, this being common practice in South Africa; doing so could cause problems with chasers' logging. I therefore signed as ZS6/M0NJH (operating under CEPT licensing arrangements, having informed SARL of my planned operating window)
Activating ZS/GP-016, Krugersdorp Tailings
An unusual summit with security concerns, worth 8 points
This is an unusual summit in that it is an immense man made hill of waste by-product from a gold mine in Krugersdorp. Physically it is a huge sand dune, with coarse grasses and very limited vegetation. I had contacted Graham ZS6GL as a previous activator, who kindly offered to accompany me on the activation. He advised that security threats from illegal miners ("Zama Zama") and others in the area could make it a dangerous activation.
We met at Dirt Bronco, an off-roaders' racing track venue, where Graham had sought permission to leave our cars (and an informal guard looked after them for a couple of hours).
We crossed the main road (busy) and started a direct ascent up the steep dune side. This was hard going, feeling like a 45 degree slippery slope, with every step forward hampered with a slide backwards in the sand, and little to help us ascend except coarse grasses and the occasional bush for shade. An alternative ascent is to approach from the back via a dust track, which is a less steep climb, and in fact Graham chose this route for a more comfortable descent.
Having achieved most of the height gain I could see the summit to my right, and proceeded diagonally across.
The next challenge was to stop the sand getting into my microphone and KX2, so keeping everything off the sand and away from the wind which was whipping up clouds of sand. Setting up my sotapole and bandhopper was ok, with the sand firm enough to hold the necessary tent pegs. A clump of trees near the summit provided some shade for an activation spot:
I managed 10 SSB QSOs on 20m and 40m, plus one with Graham on 2m when he was outside the activation zone, allowing him a 'complete' for the summit (he then went on to activate with 6 QSOs from my station)
Huge thanks to Graham for showing me the ropes and making this, my first ZS6 activation, such fun. Next Activation: ZS/GP-024 Swartkop >>
