An Accidental First Activation

One of my primary interests is playing with antennas. I had decided to go up to Sheridan Peak (W7O/NC-009) to test some, as an opportunity to get out of the house while we had workers here. I had been up to the parking lot at the trailhead many times, as the local club used to operate Field Day from there. On a weekday it should be pretty quiet and peaceful. The peak is covered with 50m+ tall trees. The hike is 700m, with about a 60m climb.

My wife, however was worried about my physical condition for such a strenuous expedition, so I invited Kathleen K7KER to come along to manage the SOTA side of things: I could set up my antennas, and she could try them out. My purpose was to see how well the antennas worked in the field, rather than making contacts.

So I collected ropes, wires, antennas, cables, antenna analyzer, K2, lead-gel battery, a coax switch for comparing antennas, and other equipment (not all of which optimized for small size or low weight) and set out with a 15kg backpack.

We found a convenient log to sit on near the highest point (although the top was relatively flat, and we would have had better low angle radiation close to the edges of the AZ where the ground dropped more steeply). First step was to get on 2m: I hoisted a 2-element wire collinear from an overhead branch with 5m of coax, and got her started while I put up the dipoles for 20m and 40m at about 8m (using another branch). This was a test of a dipole using some 75 ohm Belden 735A coax, as discussed in another thread. (It is somewhat stiff, but low loss, and half the weight of RG-58.)

After lunch, Kathleen shifted to 40m and 20m, and I moved about 30m down the trail to set up my 10m vertical loop hanging from yet another branch. I sat on the ground, set up the K2 propped up on my toe, and listened around - there were a couple big gun stations running on 10m working all sorts of DX (although I couldn’t work them), and I could hear some of the stations calling them, especially around the Caribbean and South America. So I told Kathleen that 10m was open, but she had brought her KH-1 rather than the KX-2, so couldn’t get on 10m. So I went back to listening to see what I could hear and after tuning way up the band where there didn’t seem to be any activity, I came across a station sending a weak CQ SOTA. What the heck - I gave them a call. After a few issues with a balky key (I had left my Bencher paddles at a home, saving a little bit of weight), QRM, and the K2 complaining about a low battery, I finally completed an S2S with @ZL1BYZ, a distance of 11000km. Shortly afterwards we packed up and headed back down the hill.

Well, not actually completed, of course, since the job isn’t finished until the paperwork is done. That required that I set up a SOTA account and enter the data. Every time I pulled up the registration page, it gave me a cookie error, on two browsers and 2 different machines, and even after changing my cookie settings. Kathleen found a workaround and was able to register me, then the database page came up totally blank on my desktop. Finally I was able to access it from a different device and record the contact info, about 24 hours after it happened.

So the day was a success: the antennas all seemed to work well, although we never got a chance to set up a second one and compare them. I had not planned on making any SOTA contacts, but now I have 3 S2S points, and a respectable average contact distance.

I already have started a list of improvements to make, including more medium-length ropes and a better key, and am in the process of unpacking my pack and weighing each item in the process. And, if I never make more than 3 contacts, I can keep going back to the same place for more experimenting. And maybe I can even find a good spot to set up the 5-element 20m wire delta loop beam for some special occasion…

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Dale, welcome to SOTA.

Yes. There was a bug to do with passing cookies from one domain to another. This was probably a knock-on effect of a recent fix to allow multiple screens/tabs to log out and it’s all to do with the never ending war between crackers and browser authors. A never ending whack-a-mole with serious consequences if your bank-login cookies can be stolen!

We had a report someone got that error and couldn’t log in. Likely to be a user-error or something Apple iPhone. Suggestions made and user could register via some ill-defined route. Probably Apple security issue with cookies disabled. Then we had another report which I immediately assigned to “user error/Apple” as that’s how I think but it was Windows 10/Android so not Apple and probably not user-error. Do we have a bug? Third report came in and sadly it’s a bug. Into the bug pile but there was a implementation fix to get around it. That was sent to Ron N7BBQ and it worked FB. Then your friend Kathleen sent a nice bug report and she got the implementation fix from me and it obviously worked :slight_smile: This morning (UK) Andrew VK3ARR pushed a fix for this problem. For you it was just a bit of icing on the cake of having to learn how to “do the paperwork”.

I feel an explanation is needed. You can activate a summit for points (and bonus points) once per calendar year. You can submit a single activation to the database for each calendar day. But you can go up your summit, play SOTA/POTA chasing/antenna evaluation/whatever as often as you like and you can repeatedly submit activation logs for the same summit every day of the year. You only get summit points once. Subsequent activations gain you 0 points (much like the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest!) But you can claim S2S points and you also let chasers chase you for points. They can chase that summit once/day every day of the year. So you should always be able to find SOTA chasers, especially when you spot yourself.

So please continue to go up and activate and work as many as you can and log it. And I can put money on the fact people will be interested in your antenna experiment descriptions. Sometimes we activate with minimal antennas because there’s a long walk/climb. And sometimes we want a mega-antenna for special events when the walk is smaller.

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Thanks, Andy.

I wasn’t too worried, except that I had told John on the air that it was an S2S, so wanted to get it properly recorded. The problem was on an Apple desktop, using either Firefox or Safari, but no iPhone involved this time. Thanks to the IT team for resolving it, as clearly I’m not the only one who has encountered it. (As a retired software engineer, I quite understand the problems.)

And, yes, I understand about visiting summits multiple times. I may have to make another visit up there soon anyway, as my antenna tuner doesn’t appear to have made it back down the hill. Besides, I still have a 30m dipole, 15m J-pole, and an unconventional link dipole to test out, among others…

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Great to hear your story behind the 10m s2s QSO. My setup was 10w and a random wire antenna. ZL1/AK-027 Pukekohe Hill is a local summit that I visit often. So I am there to enjoy a bit of SOTA action and give any chasers a whopping 1 point :grinning:. I appreciate and enjoy all contacts, s2s are gold so thank you for finding me.
John ZL1BYZ

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Thanks, John!

We did go back up there a few days later. Didn’t find the antenna tuner, but I did make some contacts with my 30m dipole that I wanted to test out.

It turns out that the tuner didn’t come back from the summit because it didn’t make the trip up in the first place: apparently it rolled off the pile of stuff waiting to be packed and hid behind my grandson’s exercise equipment.

I did learn one important thing, however. There was ample evidence that this is a favorite hangout for local elk, and I will need to make sure my antenna wires are well out of the way of their antlers in case one comes wandering by…

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Antler-supported antenna is something to keep in mind, Dale. I’ve forgotten the crappie pole more than once. But how to get the Elk to stand still for 4 contacts? Give it a crossword puzzle?

Elliott, K6EL

If I can train the whole heard to walk single file, I could join the Top Band folks using a mobile half-wave dipole.

But do elk count as a vehicle? Perhaps only if you try to ride one?

I do remember, as a very young child, watching a heard of elk grazing in a park and, not knowing any better, picking a handful of grass and walking up to offer it to one. My mother remembered the shear panic as the beast raised its head and that giant rack of antlers passed on either side of me.

We did have them come through the garden on occasion and take one bite out of the center of each head of cabbage. That didn’t leave much for the rest of us.

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