Cold and Windy Activation in Minnesota

Activation Reports
1

This was my first activation in a long, long time, can you say 2005 (Mount Rainier) and first n Minnesota!
I attempted two activations, (SE-004-1070, and SE-003-1110), now i know why SE-004-1070 has only been activated once, (see photo of snow and trees), it is in between two residential homes, and today 4 feet of snow, so I took a picture and moved on to the next summit to activate.
The second summit, (SE-003-1110 resides smack dap in the middle of Frontenac State Park, beautiful, the summit is located in the remote primitive campground, little trekking through 14 inches of snow into the woods, set up the buddistick, too cold and windy to test the dipole. Lots of activity on the bands, four minutes into calling cq on 20 meters, and boom, KB9CNN, on another summit. Then a long period of calling cq, hunting and pecking on the freqs, then two in a row, then nothing. By this time my feet and hands were numb, and I packed it in, falling short by one qso.
Lessons Learned:

  1. Make sure you are logged into the SOTA Goat App before you are set up
  2. Post on the SOTAWATCH, I did not even consider that, brain freeze, or old age
  3. Bring hand warmers
  4. Bring and pitch my one-person tent in this type of weather
    Equipment:
  • Yaesu :FT-818
  • Dakota 7ah battery
  • Buddistick
  • Old yoga matt to put gear on the snow/and sit on
    No pictures, formatting Issue from the iPhone
3 Likes
2

Hi Russell, great advice, great photo. :+1:

Geoff vk3sq

1 Like
3

Those are two extremes, Mt Rainier and the relatively low elevation Mississippi River! Weather today was a little raw in SE Minnesota for activating, props to you for operating in it. Nice to get a summit to summit as one of your contacts. I’ve used a Yaesu FT817 as my primary SOTA radio for a couple of years now and am happy with it. Frontenac is a good low effort summit to try out different station setups, antennas, etc., so you have it dialed in for the ones that are not as easy to get to. If you get up to the northern MN SOTA summits, you’ll have a lot of chasers wanting to contact you for those uniques.
73, Peter KD0YOB

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(K0M/SE-003 on a warmer February day, 2019.)

2 Likes
4

You can log that for S2S

5

He can’t, Barry. KB9CNN was in a park, not on a summit. Ironically, the next station he logged was actually on a summit, but W0LMS is not in the log of the Sota activator. A swing and a miss times two.

EL

1 Like
6

Read the post properly Barry - doh :cry:

2 Likes