12-6-2020, Coyote Peak W6/NC-399

Since the last summit was so fun, I broke down and bought an Elecraft KX2 and a lightweight end fed antenna so I had my own gear ready to go this time. It arrived a day before I took it on a trip to Colorado and was not able to make any contacts from the house we were staying at, so I was a bit nervous as to how it might perform. I caught up with a more experienced activator, Peter, WB6POT on 2m and he decided to come along.  He'd bring his own radio and antenna, so if something was wrong with mine we'd have backup.

We started at the Pueblo Day Use parking lot in Santa Teresa County park.  Normally there is a fee to park, around $6, but because of Covid the fee was being waived.  The Hidden Springs Trail head is by the sign board and is a little over a mile up to the peak, with about 600' of elevation gain on the trail. We went through a cattle gate about half way up.


I'm mainly doing SOTA as a fun way to exercise.  It was pretty clear on the way up that I needed it.  Peter was patient with all my breaks to keep my heart rate under control.

It was super misty as the fog layer was low and you couldn't see much.  I didn't take many photos because there wasn't much to look at.  It was windy and cold at the top.  The wind eventually died a bit but we never had a view through the fog.

There were several benches on the top, and one of them had a hitching-post-looking structure that seemed to be a convenient place to lash my carbon fiber pole, and it was just far enough away from the bench to get the antenna back there so we could sit on the bench to operate.

Peter made a couple of contacts on 2m while I was setting up, but our radios seemed to be pretty de-sensed from the equipment at the peak.  I put on a half wave with a bandpass filter I got from SotaBeams, and it helped with 2m FM quite a bit. Then we got on 20m.  We made summit-to-summit contacts pretty much right away with K0DAJ on W0D/BB-037, and K6EL on W6/NC-298 close by us. Trading operating position, we each made four or five more chaser contacts and then switched to 40m where we worked N3XUL (with KB8UIP) on Sheephead Mountain W6/SD-020 and a few other chasers. Peter finished up with an S2S on CW and it was nice to see the keyer worked on my KX2. Lots of summit-to-summit today.

On the way down, the fog lifted and we could finally start to see beyond a couple hundred feet.  I looked back on the peak from the parking lot.

You can easily pull this one off in a couple of hours.


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