This past Saturday I was fortunate to have activated 2 summits on Colorado’s front range using my trusty FT60R and Rollup Jpole. The first summit (Low or no RF) W0C/FR-030 is located about 1.6 miles from W0C/PR-082 (super high RF) so this was a great opportunity to try out the 2m RF filter.
Summit of Chief Mountain looking at Squaw mountain.
This is the summit of Squaw Mountain. Lots of antennas!
I experienced no RF problems on Chief and had a blast making contacts with familiar and new chasers.
After arriving on Squaw I set up as far away from antennas as I could and immediately knew from testing my receiver with the NOAA weather signal (which was clear on the previous mountain) RF energy was high. I called CQ without the filter with very poor unreadable callbacks or perhaps others using simplex. I also had a signal that totally overwhelmed my receiver. This signal occurred About once a minute for 5-10 seconds.
I switched to the 2m RF filter and made calls and like magic QSOs were much cleared and readable. I did notice if I oriented the filter a certain way the signal cleared to full quieting while oriented perpendicular there was some QRM. I am not sure if it was a connector issue or if orientation of filter might matter? The overwhelming signal was still present and wiped out reception for a couple seconds every minute or so. I think the filter was a worthwhile investment and adds more summits I’ve been shy to invest time in activating to the list.
Erik