This peak is a relatively uninteresting drive up summit in eastern Texas. Your GPS will get you here. The unpaved county roads were a bit sketchy in the sedan I had since it had rained the day before. There were a few muddy sections that I was worried I might get stuck in, but a bit of speed got me through.
 |
| Tower at the high point. I didn't see any signs forbidding access to the base of the tower. |
My operation, on the other hand, was terrible. I threw my antenna over a branch on the side of the road and sat there. The first problem came when I connected my tuner in wrong, and sent 5W into the antenna port. Luckily, Elecraft anticipated people doing this, and the internal relay saved the tuner.
 |
| There was a bit of a view. |
Everything connected properly, I started calling CQ. It seemed my signal wasn't getting out. I didn't get any replies, and not even any RBN spots. Eventually I got one contact on 20. I then tried calling on 30 for a while with the same results. After giving up there I went down to 40m. I managed two weak contacts, leaving me one short.
 |
| Antenna on the side of the road. |
By this point the sun was close to setting and I was getting cold. Calling CQ did not seem to be working, so I started hunting around in the band for someone calling cq, or a conversation that I could tail-end. Eventually I found one, and after a few minutes of waiting for the stations to finish, I called the stronger one. He came back, and I quickly got the last qso in the log. I packed up quickly and got back in my warm car for the long drive back to the hotel.
Trailhead: Drive up to the summit.
Website: SOTA Site.
Maps: AA6XA SOTA Hikes map.
Route: Find a place to setup. Activation zone is quite large.
Red Tape: None.
No comments:
Post a Comment