I made it up to Chabot 2 Benchmark (W6/NC-432) in the early afternoon. It was somewhat impromptu, as I was not sure when the day started if I would be able to activate. Conditions in the area (San Francisco Bay) were awful; 40 meters was incredibly noisy, while 20 meters seemed almost dead quiet by comparison. 17, 15, and 12 meters were completely dead with nothing heard at all (other than static). I could occasionally hear stations on 20 and 40, although rarely more than two or so at a time.
I started to get excited at one point when I heard a station speaking in Japanese quite clearly, up to a 55 or so at times. Then I heard his callsign, which had a “W6” prefix; he was probably relatively close to my QTH.
It took me approximately three hours to get the four contacts I needed to qualify. The two farthest were S2S’s in Utah and Oregon, with the operators responding to my pleas on SOTA Goat. With the exception of my last contact–K6EL, across the bay in San Francisco–it was all that I could do to understand the operators on the other end. The worst signal report for me was 44, with the rest being in the mid to high fives.
These were the worst conditions that I have experienced in my very short time operating HF.
Pretty middling day from the JA side. Not a single NA station heard from 2300 to 0100 on 20, 17, or 15. I did get 8 S2S using CW with mainland JAs and also VK2IO/P. Weather was beautiful though and the first-time use of the mobile amp was a success.
Mount Elliot is a great location for a larger station, if you want to try out more power or antennas.
By the way, unless things have changed, the electric BBQs there are free to use, so you could have had an egg 'n bacon brekky freshly cooked as a reward for the early morning activation!
Hiked up W2/GC-015 Ashokan High Point and camped overnite on the summit. Hike was a lot of vertical in the last mile - slow going with the pack weight. Low temp about 27F. Hung the antenna and set up camp. On the air a little later than planned, but made a good amount of contacts in half hour to hour operating stints into the night, quite a few by campfire. I was a little disappointed at the activity level. Think I only made 2 S2S QSOs. Expected a lot more, but again, arrived at the summit probably after the peak activity hours for NA, and was hiking down before midday on Sunday. Still, filled a couple of log sheets.
Thanks again Gerard for the s2s QSO’s!!! I was very surprised to work you on one band, and working on two bands was really a big surprise. I also worked Zl1BYZ for another new “s2s country” on SOTA. I continued to listen to you call CQ for quite a while and heard both sides of your s2s QSO with Charlie, NJ7V.
I heard one JA SOTA activator, but I could not break thru the JA pile up he was working. I was real surprised that we had any conditions at all to VK/ZL with the low solar activity we had.
Thanks again, and we will have to do it again some day!
