Sorry, I provided wrong reference in SOTA alert today. The correct summit reference is W6/SN-030 (Leavitt Peak). There is a lot of smoke in California, so it is easy to make a mistake:).
It was not only my mistake today. When I hiked to the Leavitt Peak, I realized that I don’t have a coax cable. I was ready to hike down, because I already had a headache from an elevation, but last moment a though came to my head. It is difficult to think on 11569 ft (3526 m) of elevation, because of lack of oxygen. But I decided to try operate without coax cable. I installed low slopping dipole for 20 m band, and attached my antenna to HB-1B qrp radio with two jumper wires. Because those wires increased size of my dipole, antenna became out of resonance, but I was able to get approximately 1 W with such setup. I did not expect that anybody will answer my call, but miracle happened. AB6SO from Bay area answered my call. I asked him to spot me, and he responded that I already spotted. This was a good news, and I realized that my signal was received on Reverse Beacon Network.
Nobody else called me on 20 m, and I made similar setup for 30 m band.
This was even better than 20 m. I logged contacts on 30 m with K9VD (WA), WA7JTM (AZ) and N7CW (AZ). Also heard N4PL (GA), but I am not sure if he gave signal report to me. On the way down I thought about the different connection type - make a jumper wires as a twisted pair. This may provide a better dipole matching.
Conclusion: “Never give up!”
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You did well. I always carry a spare black red to bnc binding post in my bag it is handy to lock straight onto the kx3 or HB1B bnc antenna fitting. Then you can dodgy up your normal dipole as an end fed or something to save the day. Because I use 80m extensions to my normal 40m dipole they are about 9.5 m long so one for radiator and the other for counterpoise will get you some contacts. Not having many chasers will help you to let them know the mix up with the summit Ref so you saved it with ease.
Regards Ian vk5cz …
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