2019-02-24 Guatay In The Snow

Today’s trip is a hike to Guatay Mtn to activate “W6/CC-025 - Guatay Mountain”.  About a year ago, on Oscars Sunday, I went up there with my daughter so it's appropriate that I repeat it today, Oscars Sunday.  There is one key difference on today’s hike, snow.  I got to the trailhead at about 830 and the ground was pretty frozen.  The trail was fully covered with snow all the way to the summit.  It was fun to be out there playing in the snow, doing some hiking, and enjoying the sunshine and snow covered vistas, something that I don’t see often in SoCal.  There had been hikers on the trail most likely yesterday and quite a few today so I wasn’t having to break trail.  In places it looked to be about six inches of snow. 

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. 

2019-02-03 SOTA and DMR Test

I’ve been down with a cold since my last expedition a week ago and it rained all day yesterday.  I really wanted to get out of the house, get some fresh air and a little exercise before the Super Bowl game.  My objective was an easy, close hike just up the road in Rancho Bernardo called hill 1109 W6/SC-456.  I’ve activated that hill once before so I’m familiar with it.

On the way up I thought about trying to rally the troops on the DMR talk group 310014, AKA “San Diego Hangout”.  There’s two talk groups in the city that I know about and the hangout  is alway buzzing.  It’s a great group of guys always that are always willing to help each other out.  If I could get 4 contacts using my HT simplex (direct and not using a repeater) and using Digital Mobile Radio (DMR), it would be my first DMR only activation of a SOTA peak.  One of the other things that I’ve been doing lates on my SOTA trips is contacting KC2GNV, the DMR whisperer, to do some testing.  Brian is a huge promoter of DMR and uses the same radio that I have, the Anytone AT-868UV.  He also runs a repeater on Otay Mountain so he knows a lot more about DMR than I do.  He knows the Anytone backwards and  forwards.  If I’m having a problem, I, along with everyone else in the county, reach out to Brian.