2-28-2021, Mount Umunhum W6/CC-052

I went out again with WB6POT and felt like today we'd tackle an easy summit.  He had never been to Mount Umunhum before.  I had activated it last year, but I was game to do it again. 

This summit has a small parking lot near the top. There are probably 50 spaces, but most people tend to park and spend 30 minutes or so walking around the interpretive trail at the top, so the spaces tend to turn over quickly.  I thought we might have to wait 5 or 10 minutes for a space, but when we got there, plenty were available.  We parked and started up the two sets of stairs to the actual summit.

A couple of years ago I had purchased a "camping antenna" setup and I had never had an opportunity to try it out.  It was made from a combination of an MFJ big stick whip and a Wolf River Silver Bullet TIA tripod and coil.  The whole thing is fairly portable for car camping and a short hike, but was not the kind of thing I'd take to most summits, so this was a great opportunity to see how it worked since we didn't have to walk it in very far.


I didn't bring the manual so after looking at the coil and base to figure out the best way to attach the radials, we got it set up.  I went to get a short piece of coax in my pack to connect to the radio, and couldn't find the BNC to 259 adapter I needed to connect to the antenna. I thought I had one in the car but neither one of us wanted to go back down the stairs again, so I pulled out my SotaBeams endfed and threw it up in a bush-like tree that was close by.

There was a bench and some rocks.  Why we chose the rocks I'm not totally sure, maybe we felt like we didn't want to take over the bench, or more likely, that was where the feed point of the antenna was.

Peter got started on 20m CW right away.  Cell phone service up here is spotty at best with AT&T, which we both had.  There was one bar of coverage and data was not working.  I called out on 146.52 to see if anyone was on frequency to help with spots. Somebody up in Oakland tried to help but couldn't figure it out. I walked around a bit and found a spot where data sort of worked, and was able to send out a spot.  Within 10 minute or so, Peter had bagged probably a dozen QSO's, including a French call sign we think was operating SDR on the web, a Canadian VE7, and an NC station, among the typical WA/OR/AZ stuff we normally work.  At one point it was AZ after AZ and we laughed.


Peter brought a gardening knee pad, which makes a perfect table to hold the radio and writing pad.  Nice idea, I may get one also.


I had been running the same battery on the KX2 since I bought it, but it finally gave up it's charge on this summit and we had to plug in another battery.  We noticed the power output drop fairly significantly when this happened.

After my last experience with CW, I decided I probably needed a bit more practice before I ventured out again.  So I went over to 20m SSB and got a half dozen or so voice contacts.  Then we went over to 40m and Peter worked more CW and we chased a couple of other summits.

We were both getting tired at this point, but I really wanted to test out the vertical before we left.  Peter went down to the car and brought up some RG58 coax with an adapter on it, while I packed up the end fed.  Turns out it was not the adapter we needed, but with the coax we were able to make something else work.

I reached into my bag to pull out my iPortable iP60z antenna analyzer to figure out where the coil tap points needed to be to get the antenna resonated, and then I realized I had left it on my desk at home.  So we used the ATU in the KX2 to tune the full coil up.  It worked remarkably well on 40m and 30m CW.  Peter made a few more contacts on CW and we packed it up.

We had so many HF contacts we didn't really get on 2m, but the radio was still tuned to 146.52.  Just at the end when everything was packed and we were ready to go, I heard K6KLY call out from Mount Tamalpais (W6/CC-063) in Marin County so we were able to make a VHF summit to summit contact with a 5 watt HT.   Last time I was here the RFI on 2m was pretty unbearable, but I was in a different location then.  I didn't need to use my SotaBeams VHF bandpass filter that I wish I had with me the last time I was at this summit.

The views of San Jose were amazing.  We had a great conversation with a young couple who came by and were amazed at what we were doing.  Also got to meet up with a couple old friends from church who were hiking around up there.



An easy summit, and one I'll probably do every year.  You can see everything from up there.

SOTA Activation Info:

Lots of parking, but can be full
Spotty ATT cell service
Easy Hike up stairs
No fees
Permit supposedly required but if there are no rangers to catch you....
Bathrooms in parking lot
Some low bushes but not many trees
High RF noise floor due to towers nearby
Great spot for 2M FM, but recommend band pass filter



TimeCallsignBandModeNotes
20:53K7SO14MHzSSB
20:55KB7ULD14MHzSSB
20:57WW7D14MHzSSB
21:06KK7A14MHzSSB
21:07K6ABM14MHzSSB
21:08K6HPX14MHzSSB
21:09N7CNH14MHzSSB



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