N1CLC: 2019-11-17 Tahquitz Peak

I’ve been wanting to do Tahquitz Peak for a while but things have been getting in the way. It’s located by Idlewild, making it an all day junket. I was introduced to this one by Adam, K6ARK last year so I knew the drill. I contacted Adam to see if he wanted to go and was busy. I reached out to Mark, KG6LI to see if he wanted to go but he’s on the DL. I forgot to call one other SOTA operator, so, I was solo today.

I planned on taking my new standard loadout, the lighter KX2 and a couple of wire antennas. The only fly in the ointment is that there is a “phone contest” going on today. This means all of the big contest stations and others with large and small antennas will be out working the contest to see who can get the most contacts. They will also be running a lot of power and the bands will be packed. Punching through a pileup of hams running over a kilowatt with my little 10 watt radio can be tough. I figured I could probably pickup enough contacts on the CW portion of the band if I had too since the contest didn’t include CW. My CW sucks but it’s getting better.

I actually was vacillating between this trip and something closer, but with winter approaching, I figured I better take advantage of a free day to get up there. I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving so today’s the day. The peak is at 8,846 feet but the weather was forecast to be nice. I had my puffy jacket stuffed at the bottom of the pack, my fleece and a shell which are always in the pack, so I was ready for cooler weather if needed. If it was windy, I’d definitely need the fleece. I think the total weight was at about 27 lbs, really light for me.

As usual, I didn’t get out of the house as early as I wanted. After a quick pack check and a coffee to go, I was out of the house by 7. It’s a little under 2 hours to the trailhead and was a nice drive. Going early on a Sunday meant that traffic was light all the way up. I made a quick pit stop in Idlewild and then set off to the trailhead. The dirt road to the trailhead seemed a bit more rough on the way up as my AWD kicked in a couple of times.

The hike starts at about 6,500 feet and I think the temp was ~64 and warming. The hike to the summit is a pretty constant but gentle climb over ~3.5 miles, climbing 2,352 ft. There were several cars at the bottom so others were taking advantage of the nice weather as well. Clear sky’s prevailed and the views were fantastic. I passed a couple of trail runners on the way down and when I got near the top, a crew had just finished shutting down the lookout station and was headed down off the peak. This is a pretty hike with a nice trail lined with large pines and oak trees (one of the reasons I really wanted to do this one). There was a small breeze at the top, chilling my sweaty body, so I pulled my fleece on and got to work.

I decided to use my Par EndFedz EFT-MTR antenna (now sold by Vibroplex). By using some very small RG174 feed line it was a very long sloper with the matching unit at-least 10 feet of the ground. The RG174 coax feed line shield conductor probably acted as a counterpoise.

Turning on the radio, I found the voice (aka phone) portion of the band was completely packed. I saw another SOTA operator on a peak running CW when I looked at the web site and I was able to work him for my first contact. Every time I tried to give him my summit number, someone always keyed up on top of me. I’ll email him and let him know it was a summit to summit. I decided to try answering the CQ of some of the contestors and was able to break through with a lot of patience. I did spot myself on 7MHz and was chased by a very reliable chaser, NS7P. I got enough contacts to activate the peak and get my points and decided to chase a few other SOTA operators and see how well I could do on SSB with the contest. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to work stations from Alaska to the east coast. It turns out that when you are on a mountain with a wire in the air, you have a pretty good station. I was on the summit for a couple of hours enjoying the sun and views. Getting contacts took a lot longer as I had to wait my turn in the pileups though. No worry, I ended up with coast to coast contacts and it was a great test of what you can do with 10 watts. I had thought about bringing the 100 watt radio but because it was a domestic contest I probably wouldn’t have gotten any DX except for Hawaii and the band conditions for that won’t be optimal till after I had hiked off the summit. I worked a station in Hawaii yesterday from home so I got my DX fix.

I wanted to hang out a while longer and chase some other stations on mountain tops via CW but I had to get home in time to hit Costco. My sondary mission was to get some steaks, and get them on the grill for our special guest, my mother-in-law. On the descent I “range walked” and made really good time but the pounding gave me a touch of shin split or just a pissed off ankle. I tried to exit via Idlewild but a large section of the road was blocked off. Not sure what was going on but I had to detour back the way I came. The rest of the drive home was uneventful and the Costco run a success. (The steak was awesome!!!)

I took a GoPro but forgot to turn it on for the radio work. I’ll get it edited and posted sometime soon. Not having it turned on for the radio work will definitely ease the editing since there are big gaps between contacts.

Contacts

Date:17/Nov/2019 Summit:W6/CT-007 (Tahquitz Peak) Call Used:N1CLC Points: 8 Bonus: 0 Delete

Time	Call	Band	Mode	Notes
19:27z	WC6J	14MHz	CW
19:44z	K4OV	14MHz	SSB
19:53z	K4LPQ	14MHz	CW
20:04z	NS7P	7MHz	SSB
20:15z	N6DNM	7MHz	SSB
20:15z	K6QCB	7MHz	SSB
20:16z	N7MQ	7MHz	SSB
20:17z	N0OI	7MHz	SSB
20:18z	K6LDQ	7MHz	SSB
20:20z	N5UM	14MHz	SSB
20:28z	NX6T	14MHz	SSB
20:31z	AL7LO	14MHz	SSB
20:33z	KD5JRY	14MHz	SSB
20:36z	K5TR	14MHz	SSB
20:37z	K1BX	14MHz	SSB
20:39z	W5WZ	14MHz	SSB
20:49z	K5DEZ	7MHz	CW
20:49z	WW5M	7MHz	SSB