I’ve been up Old Mount Baldy many times but this would be my first time activating it for SOTA.
Arrived with my non-ham friend at the trail head around 730am-ish. The hike took us roughly 25 minutes to get to the top so is ideal for anyone doing their first activation.
Views from the top of Baldy are probably one of the best in the Cowichan Valley with it being almost 360 degrees of views. You can see most of the Cowichan Valley, the Saanich Peninsula and on a clear day over to mainland British Columbia.
The goal with this activation was to use my (tr)uSDX along with the “FT8 Radio” app for Android. I have previously done a SOTA activation with the app and my FT-891 but this was a first with the (tr)uSDX/app combo. I did a quick test at home earlier in the week to make sure I could make a QSO with the combo and it worked just fine.
Setup a 1/4 wave vertical with one 1/4 elevated radial for 20 metres. The summit didn’t have many trees but lots of rocks so I just wedge my mast between a few rocks and that did the trick.
Totally forgot to turn on VOX on the (tr)uSDX so once I did that I could see I was transmitting.
Got 4 QSOs pretty quick including one from VE7JH who is local so that was great. I had one callsign that I made contact with but we couldn’t complete the QSO. After that I struggled to get any more contacts so decided to pack it in with the 4 I had.
Headed down which took probably around 25 minutes as well. So overall a fairly quick hike and activation. Good way to spend a Saturday morning.
Overall I’d say the experiment of using the (tr)uSDX and the app worked well. As I’ve stated in my previous activation report the app is not perfect and a bit clunky to use. I’d definitely much prefer to have a laptop with WSJT-X but there’s also the trade off of not having to haul a laptop up to the summit. One day I’ll get some sort of light weight laptop.
