Today’s expedition takes me to Black Mountain, located near Ramona,
California. I’ve recently acquired an Elecraft KX2, a 10 watt very small high
quality HF ham radio and I’m itching to test it out. I picked it up used from a ham in northern
California which saved me a bundle. I
really want to lighten my load and by my calculations, switching to the KX2
will save me 7 lbs of weight!!!
Another incentive is the “ARIZONA S2S 10-POINT
MADNESS” that is hapening this weekend.
That “madness” means that a lot of hams will be on summits in Arizona,
giving me plenty of opportunity to get some more summit to summit points,
something I enjoy doing. I was going to
join Adam on a summit today but I had already done the planned peak. By choosing this drive up location, I get
some points and figured I would haul some extra equipment and try some high
power VHF. My 3-element yagi 2m isn’t
going to be nearly as good as Adams custom 6 element but I thought it would be
fun to try since today’s mission didn’t require me to backpack it in.