11-10-23 W6/NC-221 (China Grade Benchmark)

 

I did this one after activating Ben Lomond Mountain.  It was maybe an hour away down some fairly windy one lane paved roads. But it was midnight GMT so technically a different day.

This summit is literally along the road to Cutter Scout Reservation, where've I've been to a number of times before it was burned to the ground in the fires a few years ago.  There is a locked gate just a few hundred feet past the summit, but it's accessible.  A parking turn out was maybe 80 feet down the road.

The summit itself towers about 50 feet above the road, and there's some deer trails that seem to go to the top, but when I pulled my phone out and noticed the AZ extended to the road, plus it was going to be dark in an hour, I decided not to hike up.  There was a very nice rock right at the gate that made a perfect chair, so I decided to set up just inside the gate.


There were a couple of tall emergency cones on either side of the gate, one of which made a perfect place to strap my mast.  I was all about quick and easy at this point so I moved the cone 20 feet down the road and aligned the end of my SOTABeams Midi so it landed at the rock right at the gate.

About the time I was getting the radio out, a CalFire truck approached from the closed part of the road.  I smiled and tried to be very friendly, explained exactly what I was doing, and he had no problem with it. We chatted, he asked a few questions about ham radio, and then he opened the gate and went on.

Looking at my watch, I realized I had only maybe 30-40 minutes until it got dark, so I connected the radio and tuned up quickly.  I was able to spot over ATT cellular and got quite a few contacts on various bands.

I packed up just at dusk and started to drive down.  Here's a few of the views about 2 miles south of the AZ.









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