All my plans for great weekend hikes were thrown out once the smoke from the Camp Fire in Butte County started blowing in Thursday night. By Saturday the air was very unhealthy. So instead of being cooped up all day, I picked some near drive-up summits to activate.
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| San Bruno Mountain was just visible. |
The first I did was Mt Davidson, the San Francisco high point. Its about a quarter mile walk up to the bench from the entrance. Extremely smokey.
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| Looking over towards Mt Diablo and the East Bay. |
Despite the smoke there were a fair number of people out. Most just ignored me, but one or two asked what I was up to. Once I had worked all the bands I headed across the Bay Bridge to the Ham Radio Outlet in Oakland. I picked up a MFJ 1820t antenna to try out. With my new antenna I drove up to the redwood railroad in Tilden Park to get Vollmer Peak.
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| The views were no better here. |
This hike is about half a mile to the top. I sat on the north-east facing slope. I tossed my counterpoise wire down the slope, and attached the whip. I started calling on 20, and got many more responses than I was expecting with such a small antenna. Even better, the internal KX3 tuner was able to match it on 30 and 17
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| The cp wire reached to the post past my feet. |
After working everyone, I set up the 2m extended double zepp. I had brought the amplifier, but one of the cables on the dc-dc converter had fallen out, so I only ran barefoot with the HT. I got quite a few contacts, up to Grass Valley, out to Valley Springs, and down to south San Jose. Not bad for 5W.
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| So much smoke. |
Once I starting getting cold, I packed up and headed back to the car.
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