W5RJD Summit on the Air (SOTA) Activations

On a family trip to Fort Bragg I found a quick one point summit about 20 minutes away from our AirBNB, so I took the opportunity to do the activation.  I only had the van with me so I had to worry about low clearance and thin tires, but I figured if I had to hike it all the way from Hwy 20 I'd still be okay, as it looked to be less than a mile from the main road. This summit had only been activated 4 times previously, so I was a little worried about access. This summit is inside the Jackson Demonstration State Forest so I expected fire roads.  Heading south on 20 there were two fire roads on the map that could lead to the summit.  I took the one to the north.  It was paved and in great shape even for its age, and there wasn't a gate.  About a half mile or so up, you take a right jog on a dirt road, but even that was in good shape. The van made it quite easily even though I had to pull over in a tight spot to let a logging truck by.  I had loaded the AZ into...

I was heading up to Black Mountain to install a point to point link for a local radio station, and got to drive all the way to the top.  So I threw my SOTA bag in the car hoping I'd have a few minutes to activate.  We drove up Page Mill Rd and took a left into the combination-locked gate, went through a padlocked one, and then ended up at site 5 to do our work. The tower we were working on was outside the activation zone, but that wasn't anything a 5 minute hike couldn't fix.  SOTAGoat to the rescue, and I found a nice tree just inside the activation zone to throw my wire into.  Tuned up on 18 Mhz and got about 7 contacts, then had a couple of minutes to move over to 40 meters for another 2. It was a quick one and sorry I didn't try any other bands, but I had people waiting to drive back down. It sure beat the 3 hour hike the last time I did this peak!