Sunday, February 10, 2019

2019-02-10 Lagunas to Spain


I got out of the house early, about 0640,  and headed out to the trailhead.  Today’s SOTA mission was to a mountain in the Lagunas to do Sheephead but the Forest Service had other ideas.  The gate was closed going into the trailhead that I use for Sheephead, I’m not sure why.  The road did have snow on it but my Highlander AWD worked awesome on the snow and ice when I tested it so I wouldn’t have had a problem....  It’s possible there was a washout somewhere on the road. After a quick replan, I continued up the Sunrise Highway a bit and hiked Hill 5764, W6/SD-026 - 5764.  l did this one last year as a recommendation from K6ARK.  It’s an easy hike and the trailhead was about 6 miles from where I was.  Next year I’ll try to do Sheephead and this one on the same day. 




When I pulled into the parking lot near the trailhead it was 28 F.  I hopped out and quickly dawned an extra layer and head cover and gloves.  The wind was blowing so I expected the summit to be a bit more windy, a lot more windy.  The trail was frozen with some patches of snow but nothing significant.  There is a storm arriving this afternoon from the west and north-west which was where the wind was from. 

The hike up was pretty easy and the trail easy to follow.  The summit was WINDY, with gusts to 60 by the time I left, almost blowing me over one time.  There is a fence post at the summit making a setup of my vertical antenna easy.  The wind was bending it over at times.  I setup my operating position on the leeward side of the mountain, trying to get out of the wind.  I was up and running quickly and found an open channel.  I sat as far as I could stretch my 25 ft. coax from the peak to get out of the wind but it was still pretty windy.  Temp of about 30 and wind at my operating positon of 20 mph, wind chill would be 17.  I started launching RF into the fabric of spacetime after spotting myself and quickly had a pileup.

The usual operators were chasing me but I got a cool surprise, EA2LU, Jorge from Pamplona Spain!  That's 5,800 miles!  He gave me a weak signal report but he was booming into my station.  When I thought back when I had first fired up the radio, I thought I heard a conversation in Italian and references to somewhere in Italy so the propagation was excellent in the morning.  We are at the bottom of the sun cycle so it’s propagation normally sucks but the position of the sun and stars worked out well for me.  I’m pretty stoked about getting Spain.  I’m going to email him and confirm.  I had perfect signal reports from New Hampshire so the propagation there was awesome as well.  The guys in Oregon were blowing me out. 

I log contacts in an app on my phone, which means I need to take my glove off to do it.  After logging 30 contacts my fingers were pretty numb.  I looked to do some summit to summit chasing but I didn’t see any other stations out there that I could reach.  Given the conditions of my numb fingers, I decided to pack up.  I normally try to get a few contacts with my phone but it was time to leave.  I did reach out to my buddy Adam, K6ARK and he came right back. 

I was back to the car in under an hour and then headed into the little village to grab something hot to eat and drink.  I did some video of the expedition which I will paste below.

Today’s hike was 2.2 miles and 534 feet in elevation gain.

 


Association: 
 USA
Region: 
 Southern Desert
Lat / Long / Height: 
 32.928001°N   -116.487297°W   1757m / 5764ft
Locator: 
 DM12sw Show »
Points / Activations: 
 6 points,  activated 18 times
Latest Activation: 
 Sunday, 2018-12-30 by WA7ER
IAF 32.92434, -116.48201

Contacts


Own
Callsign
Date
Time
Summit
Band
Mode
Station
Worked
Notes
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
16:57
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
NS7P
 OR
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:01
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
KD0MQO
 MO
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:01
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
KD1CT
 NH
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:02
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
WW7D
 WA
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:02
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
W0MNA
 KS
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:03
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
EA2LU
Pamplona Spain
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:04
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
K3TCU
 PA
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:05
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
W5BOS
 TX
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:06
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
K7POW
 OR
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:06
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
W7MSX
 ID
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:07
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
K6MXA
 CA
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:08
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
W0SEB
 SD
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:09
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
NW7E
 OR
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:10
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
N4EX
 NC
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:10
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
W2SE
 NJ
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:11
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
VA7VJ
 BC Canada
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:11
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
KE0TUI
 NE
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:13
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
WD4CFN
 TN
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:13
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
N0EVH
 MO
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:14
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
W9MRH
 IN
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:15
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
VA6FUN
 AB Canada
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:15
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
N0MTN
 CO
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:16
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
K5DEZ
 NM
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:16
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
AA1VX
 MA
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:17
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
KG3W
 PA
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:18
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
VE1WT
 NS
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:18
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
K6RP
 CA
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:20
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
NG6R
 CA
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:23
W6/SD-026
14MHz
SSB
KI7HLQ
 WA
N1CLC
10/Feb/2019
17:35
W6/SD-026
144MHz
FM
K6ARK
 CA

Loadout for today:

      Yaesu FT-891D HF Radio at 100 watts
   30’ of coax feed line
      Yaesu FT-2DR HT
      3 L of water (8 lb)
      SOTA Dog
      iPhone with All Trails, MotionX GPS and sota goat
      MFJ-939Y auto antenna tuner for 891
      Trekking poles
     Packtenna.
   Extra LiFePO Battery
   AnyTone AT-868UV DMR radio for testing.
   Delorme Inreach satellite tracker and communicator.

73,
N1CLC
Christian Claborne

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