It’s been pretty hot lately so I wanted to get this one done early. Arrived at the trail head at 6am and started my way up. Lots of switchbacks going up which was nice.
The weather was different today with low overcast and a little bit of rain but nothing too bad. It was quite foggy about half way up and up to the summit so the views were not there.
Got to the top in about 2 hours.
I tried to make a few contacts on 2m but failed. I’m definitely going to start looking for a new HT and antenna since I’m just using an old Baofeng and I don’t think I’ve ever had a successful contact on it.
Just like my previous activation, my goal was to use the “FT8 Radio” Android app to make my contacts. For an antenna I was using quarter wave vertical wire with one quarter wave raised radial. Set everything up but was having a hard time getting a low enough SWR. Eventually got it all tuned up but then I was having some issues with transmitting via the app. After messing with the VOX settings a bit I was up and running.
Got 8 contacts in total after about 45 min or so of operating. I definitely wanted to stay longer but had other things to do today so made my way back down. Took about 1h15m to get back to the car.
Next time I hope the weather is a bit more clear because I know I missed out on some nice views. It did start to clear up on the way down a bit.
