2020-08-16 Otay Mountain

I’ve never activated Otay Mountain so today’s the day.  It’s going to be hot today so a drive-up summit would be best.  I left the house early and was on the summit a little after 0730.  The dirt road is a little over 7 miles and it takes you all the way to the antenna farm at the top.  There is a small spur from Otay Mountain Truck Trail that goes up to the antenna farm.  IT’s very narrow and has some pretty big holes in it but nothing I couldn’t navigate.

The temp was probably 75 on the summit.  There are a LOT of antennas for microwave, and VHF/UHF up there plus lots of power lines.  I know of at-least 3 ham radio repeaters that are up there.

Setup was pretty quick and I spotted myself on 20 m.  I had a pileup of operators that wanted a contact and I logged 10 contacts on 20m CW and then did a little chasing without much success.  I switched to 40 meter but the noise level there was S5+ on my radio.  It was pretty difficult to pull out the 4 contacts that I did get on 40.  I spotted on 146.52 but the only response was from WD6TED in San Diego.  He’s not that far from my house and he was coming in really well.

I hunted around for a while for some other summit-to-summits and then bugged out.  It was warming up and I didn’t need to stay up there and get fried.  It was a nice leisurely Sunday morning adventure went well very.

Contacts

Date:16/08/2020 | Summit:W6/SC-128 (Otay Mountain) | Call Used:N1CLC | Points: 2

Time	Callsign	Band	Mode	Notes
15:10	K3TCU	14MHz	CW
15:11	WD6TED	14MHz	CW
15:12	W5ODS	14MHz	CW
15:14	K2JB	14MHz	CW	Summit to summit
15:14	W0MNA	14MHz	CW
15:15	W0ERI	14MHz	CW
15:16	K6ARK	14MHz	CW
15:17	KA5PVJ	14MHz	CW
15:18	AC1Z	14MHz	CW
15:28	W0NF	7MHz	CW
15:31	N6TVN	7MHz	CW
15:31	NU7Y	7MHz	CW
15:35	K7III	7MHz	CW
15:41	N4EX	14MHz	SSB
16:07	WD6TED	144MHz	FM

Loadout:

●      GoPro Hero8

●      Gregory Zulu 40 backpack

●      First aid kit.  Make sure it’s a good one... like ability to patch up an impalement wound.  

●      Elecraft KX2 10 watt HF Radio

●      The K6ARK Spider Thread Antenna

●   30’ of coax feed line (not needed

●      Slim Jim dual band antenna for my HT.

●      3 L of water (8 lb)

●      iPhone with All Trails, MotionX GPS and sota goat

●      Trekking poles (not today)

●     LNR End Fed multi-band antenna

●   SOTAbeams Tactical 7000hds Compact Heavy-Duty Telescopic Mast TAC7000HDS

●    MFJ MFJ-1714 144 MHz 1/2 Wavelength Antenna for my HT

●   AnyTone AT-868UV DMR radio for testing.

●   Custom wine bottle cork paddles for CW (crafted by K6ARK)

●   American Morse Ultra Porta Paddle for CW

●   Delorme Inreach satellite tracker and communicator.

●      Jetboil MicroMo cooking system (left at the car this trip)

●      Yaesu FT-2DR HT (backup left in the car)

●     Packtenna. (did not take)

●     CHA MPAS with spike and additional MIL mast (and version 2 of the top section) (left in car)

●      Yaesu FT-891D HF Radio at 100 watts  (left this in the car :) )

●    Extra LiFePO Battery (not needed)

●     Helinox Chair Zero Ultralight Compact Camping Chair.

 

73,

N1CLC

Christian Claborne

(aka chris claborne)