I got out for some SOTA action on Christmas Day here in in Southern California. This hill has no name other than a USGS number designation of 5764. This is one of the easiest summits I have done so far. That is good thing as I was dragging from a slow recovery from a cold. This summit offers some great views out to the Salton Sea and beyond to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west when things are clear. I have an MTB loop I ride a few times a year that goes right by here so this was an easy fit.
I also learned to check your RF power level before you start your activation.
Good advice about checking your power level. I wondered why I wasn’t getting any replies last weekend and found that I had turned the power down to 1W instead of 5W whilst changing some other settings on my FT818.
Andy
MM7MOX
Me and G4ZRP did an entire session of the 2m Backpackers once in the 10W section with the power on my radio set to 1W. I felt a proper fool when I saw what I had done and didn’t tell Brian till we had packed everything up. But it didn’t matter because we won our section anyway even running so much less power than others in our class. A lot of our success was to do with how good a VHF summit GW/NW-043 is.
I haven’t had the power turned down but on my last activation I kept getting very high swr. I hadn’t connected the antenna. I think the cold made me stupid.
