N1CLC: 2020-08-01 SoCal SOTAFest

Today’s SOTA activation is part of “SoCal SOTAFest 2020”. A group of hams, including myself, had been planning this for a while. The idea is to get as many of us on a summit as possible to enable a whole bunch of summit-to-summit contacts and have fun. As word got out, a lot of other SOTA operators took advantage of this as well. A group up in Oregon and Washington were on the air and a Colorado group called the 14’ers had scheduled to have an event of their own on the same day.

If you want more info on the event, checkout socalsota.com. That will bring you to a mailing list site that we use to communicate. The group also hosts a zoom meeting ever two weeks. It's a great bunch of hams, some new at SOTA and some that have been doing it for a long time.

I decided to head up to Black Mountain, the one behind Ramona, CA. It’s at 4000 feet and has a road all the way to the top. My expedition up there last year was in a bit of rain and I slid into a rock that I didn’t clear, but I protected the car using the muffler. Today’s trip was clear and going to be a bit warm.

Because it was a “drive-up” I brought a 100w radio, extra antennas, a 50w VHF radio and a couple of antennas for VHF along with a large tri-pod mast. I brought a directional antenna but never mounted it. I used my omni directional ground plane antenna on a 20’ tripod mast and it worked fine. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t mount the yagi. The wind came up later in the day and blew it over the VHF antenna tripod mast. That would have wrecked my yagi. Note to self: Always secure the mast :) I put some sort of cover over the two radios to keep the sun from baking them and causing a thermal shutdown.

I spent the first part of my activation chasing operators on other summits. Adam, K6ARK, popped up on my hamalert so he was first. At one point, I joined Josh, WU7H, and Darryl, WW7D on a frequency they were using from a Washington summit. We sorta did a joint activation with Josh or Darryl taking summit to summit calls and chaser calls and then directing them to contact me on the same frequency. I had a really strong signal both ways with the OR team and it was a lot of fun.

My VHF station with a mobile radio plugged into a portable battery and hooked to my Arrow ground plane antenna was covering an area from the Mexico border to northern Los Angeles. The only issue I had was that I think I misconfigured the radio for the “party line” that we had designated because I never was able to contact anybody on it. Next year I’ll do something a little different to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

I had made about 20 hf contacts and a few on VHF when John, K6MXA called me to tell me that I was telling people the wrong summit designator. My spot went out correctly when I did spot because computers with GPS get it right every time :). No problem, I fixed my log and I would email the first 20 or so contacts to let them know of the change if they didn’t catch it.

I ended the day with 81 contacts in the log and 23 summit-to-summit contacts. A few of them are duplicates but overall I netted quite a catch. I’d say the RF fishing went well. I was hoping for some DX but I didn’t get up there early enough and didn’t stay long enough. I had a lot of fun and no damage to the muffler this trip. That’s a good thing.

I did shoot some video so if what I have in the can is good, you’ll be seeing a video shortly.

Contacts

Time	Callsign	Band	Mode
17:09	N3XUL	144MHz	FM
17:17	N6JZT	144MHz	FM
17:27	K6ARK	7MHz	CW
17:35	N6WT	7MHz	CW
17:58	K7GT	7MHz	SSB
18:02	N6AN	18MHz	CW
18:03	K6TW	144MHz	FM
18:05	NA6MG	144MHz	FM
18:06	K6AQ	144MHz	FM
18:08	K6MXA	144MHz	FM
18:08	W6FE	144MHz	FM
18:09	AJ6JE	144MHz	FM
18:11	W9SSN	144MHz	FM
18:13	N6JZT	144MHz	FM
18:20	WA6LE	7MHz	CW
18:26	AI6ZV	14MHz	CW
18:36	KN6EZE	7MHz	CW
18:40	w7wD	14MHz	SSB
18:41	WU7H	14MHz	SSB
18:43	W0DFM	14MHz	SSB
18:47	K6TNT	14MHz	SSB
18:50	NG6R	14MHz	SSB
19:07	KI4SVM	10MHz	CW
19:25	N3BZ	7MHz	SSB
19:32	N6JFD/P	14MHz	CW
19:40	K7AHR	14MHz	CW
19:42	WA6ARA	7MHz	CW
19:50	KD6PZB	144MHz	FM
19:51	K6LDQ	144MHz	FM
19:53	NE6G	144MHz	FM
19:57	N1WAX	144MHz	FM
19:58	KI6RF	144MHz	FM
19:59	KI6PMD	144MHz	FM
20:00	KM6UHU	144MHz	FM
20:00	KW6ACK	144MHz	FM
20:01	W6RWS	144MHz	FM
20:06	N6YNG	14MHz	SSB
20:08	N3XUL	14MHz	SSB
20:09	KN6HTX	14MHz	CW
20:09	N6UTT	7MHz	CW
20:11	AJ6N	144MHz	FM
20:11	K6CSH	144MHz	FM
20:14	KN6IUT	144MHz	FM
20:17	KN6HTX	144MHz	FM
20:25	K7GT	7MHz	CW
20:28	KR7JAS	7MHz	SSB
20:33	W6BJB	14MHz	SSB
20:34	K9VD	14MHz	SSB
20:35	W7EDC	14MHz	SSB
20:36	W0MNA	14MHz	SSB
20:37	W0ERI	14MHz	SSB
20:38	K5DEZ	14MHz	SSB
20:41	KJ7LSM	14MHz	SSB
20:42	K4VOZ	14MHz	SSB
20:44	KK6CSO	14MHz	SSB
20:51	KR7RK	7MHz	CW
20:55	WA7JTM	7MHz	CW
20:56	KB7HH	7MHz	CW
20:57	WD6TED	7MHz	CW
20:59	W6JP	7MHz	CW
21:00	K7SO	7MHz	CW
21:02	AB6SO	7MHz	CW
21:02	N9KW	7MHz	CW
21:09	WU7H	14MHz	CW
21:22	KG7DAO	7MHz	SSB
21:33	WB7VTY	14MHz	CW
21:34	W7HO	14MHz	CW
21:37	N4HNH	14MHz	CW
21:39	NG6R	14MHz	CW
22:03	KI7I	14MHz	CW
22:05	KN6CTJ	144MHz	FM
22:06	K6QCB	144MHz	FM
22:07	KF6DBZ	144MHz	FM
22:08	W6OLL	144MHz	FM
22:09	NA6MG	144MHz	FM
22:10	KM6CEM	144MHz	FM
22:11	KN6JPZ	144MHz	FM
22:12	W9SSN	144MHz	FM
22:12	K6ULF	144MHz	FM
22:13	WB2WIK	144MHz	FM
22:36	KD7WPJ	10MHz	CW