Today’s summit is in Arizona, Baker Butte,
near Payson AZ. We are in the village of
Strawberry attending a wedding and I had a quick opportunity to do a quick SOTA
summit and possibly get a summit to summit with my friend Adam who will be
summiting a couple of peaks near where we were last weekend. We are staying at
a cool little venue for the wedding as the party has taken over all the cabins
here so it gives the family a chance to visit.
I got up early this morning in what I think was 35 degree weather and went for a quick hike, mainly drive. The activation point was about a 15 drive +
15 minute walk up to the summit. At the
top there is a fire lookout with a small residence.
It was nice to be back up in the country that
I’m more use to, thick with pine and soft dirt and pine needles. Setup was quick and I was up and running in
about 10 minutes. There was a Michigan
QSO contest going on so 20 was the band pretty busy. I made 22 contacts, most on 20m and a few on
40m including a couple of summit-to-summit contacts. I tried getting some VHF contacts on 520 but
no joy. Kind of amazing given the field
of view I had.
I was hoping to catch KJ6HOT on one of his
California summits but I submitted too early for his first summit. I setup near the cabin I was staying at and
tried to contact him when I saw his spot on sotawatch.org for the second
summit, but I picked up nada on the frequencies he posted. Next time Adam.
I got a good set of contact today on 20 and 40
meter bands. I also netted a couple of
Summit-to-Summit calls as well. I look
forward to a vacation at my summer home in Alpine AZ for more SOTA work over
there.
A quick note on the video below. I wanted to capture some audio on how well
this radio can clean up the audio with the digital noise cancelling Turned
On. The next quick shot of another ham
with it turned off gives you the feel for what it’s like without DNC.
|
IAF 34.45543, -111.39658
1 Mile hike
Network: AT&T
APRS: Yes
Contacts
Loadout for today:
●
30’ of coax feed line
● 3 L of water (8
lb)
● SOTA Dog
● iPhone with All
Trails, MotionX GPS and sota goat
● Treking poles
● Sleeping bag and extra food for the extended trip.
REFERENCE
73s,
-- Chris Claborne, N!CLC
Great entry. I was looking for the activator number for this summit for a QSL card that I am making and found your blog entry. Sorry you didn't get any FM contacts, but so you know for next time, in AZ the SOTA activators and chasers use 144.410 FM for all SOTA work. The state is really busy SOTA wise and it sure is fun to do it when the weather cooperates in the valley. My QRZ profile pic is from the tower with my D74 and an Arrow Yagi pointed towards the valley. I was able to pick up several FM contacts from chasers in Scottsdale and Phoenix from the tower, and I was also able to hit the AZ SOTA director while he was on the 17 Freeway on his way home from a summit activation up in Flagstaff. All on a 5 watt HT.
ReplyDeleteAnother amazing feat that day was hitting a station in Florida while using a KX3 and a budddipole at 10 watts during a Florida contest. That was a great day!!
Hope to see you down the log.
73
Dan
N7DSX