What a great SOTA day! Today I was joined by Jeff KK6TXO (his first activation) and Bob KK6WYW on a trip to Occidental Peak W6/CT-098. Got set up and took a deep breath. Then I made my very first CW QSOs ever from anywhere… from the summit (6 total today). It was sloppy and poorly done from my end to be sure, but they were QSOs none the less. Thank you for the patience chasers! Then I proceeded to jump up and down for about 10 minutes and nearly explode with joy at my modest achievement. Needless to say I’ve been working a while in getting the CW to stick. Whew!
Also want to add that this attempt was directly inspired by many of the conversations I’d read here on the reflector. Where I re-learned the axiom that perfection is indeed the enemy of good enough, and that I shouldn’t be afraid to make a fool of myself for goodness sakes. Thanks for the inspiration.
Then coached Jeff through his activation a bit. Getting a spot out for him and he made a dozen QSOs. Bob also made a successful activation on 2M after figuring out he needed to shield his radio with the mountain from the spurious RF garbage hammering us from the neighboring Mt Wilson antenna farm.
We were all new once and know the bug-eyed wonder that you are actually talking to somebody using nothing but some beeps. Great, isn’t it?
and then 