2020 & 2021 New Year's Summit Fest

The Summits On the Air (SOTA) amateur radio hobby is a gamified affair.  Radio operators, geeks like me, summit various designated peaks (all have at least 500’ of prominence) and depending on the elevation of the summit, receive the alloted points for the summit if they make  four contacts and have not logged that summit more than once during the calendar year.  Some of my fellow SOTA operators had plans to use the rules to get double points on one trip to the summit of a designated peak by being there as the calendar year crosses over from 2020 to 2021 on new years eve.  Because the UTC day changes at 4PM local time in the winter where I live, it’s still daylight, making it easy to get points twice on a summit in one go.

2020-12-29 Owens Peak

A friend of mine activated Owens Peak earlier this year and I’m surprised I never considered this one.  It’s easily accessible and a short little hike.  I joined a friend of mine, Jacob, W6RWS, and Jacob’s two kids, at the trailhead and we made quick work of the trip to the top.  The trail was a good climb but less less than a mile.  It was beautiful weather and enabled a quick getaway. 

Once on the summit, Jacob used his HT and quickly bagged 4 contacts.  I setup my HF end-fed antenna and fired up the KX2 and landed 15 contacts and one with my HT.  It was late in the afternoon so I didn’t get any summit-to-summit contacts but I still had a good time.

That’s it, nothing else to report.