W5RJD Summit on the Air (SOTA) Activations

WB6POT and I ventured to El Soreno today thinking that we had hit a clearing in the down pour, but unfortunately it started a heavy sprinkle up just as we arrived.  We put on our rain jackets and ventured up the trail hoping it would stop by the time we got there.  Unfortunately, it didn't.  We decided not to throw up the HF antenna and risk damaging the KX2. We made four contacts each on 2m FM while standing under a tree to try to keep as much rain as possible off the radio and then started back to the car. The radio made it back still working.  Not sure about the operators.  We were soaked.

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....

I haven't bought any portable radio gear yet, and I've never activated a summit before, so I figured for my first attempt I would pick something easy and borrow some gear.  I look out my back yard and can see Mount Umanhum, a peak nearly 4000 feet up overlooking Almaden Valley.  I have been up there only once in my life during a VIP tour before they cleaned up and developed the peak.  Since then, it's been turned into a public viewing area and you can almost drive all the way.  There's just about 150 stairs from the parking lot to the summit. For radio gear, I turned to my friend Ray, N6DZK, who had an Elecraft KX3 and an AX1 antenna.  I've been looking at the KX2 as the best option for this - and I was very skeptical that the small AX1 would do any kind of a decent job.  Ray had never used the antenna before and was anxious to try it out, so we set the date. I started learning about how alerts and spots work, what the rules were, and downloaded things like...

Covid-19.  It's awful being cooped up and not being able to hang out with friends.  But one nice outcome of the pandemic is I've had lots of time to resurrect an old hobby, Ham Radio.  I've owned my house since 1995 and never really took the time to put HF antennas on the roof until now.  Wow things have changed. So I stumbled across a new part of the hobby recently, called SOTA or Summit on the Air.  This is where a ham operator goes to the top of a summit of a mountain (in some states they might be called "hills") and "activates" the peak by making contacts with a portable radio setup.  Other radio operators, called "chasers", sit in the comfort of their home and try to make contact with you.  Then, activators of other peaks throughout the world try to communicate with you in a "Summit to Summit" conversation. I used to love to hike (I say "used to" because I haven't done any for quite some time), and I love ham radio,...