Mt. Davidson SOTA de KD0FNR 4/2/2023

Finally! Finally the antenna went up with very little fuss or muss. The key seems to be to have a new roll of twine. The little extra bit of heft gets it over the branch. Also! New York!

Park:

Mt. Davidson W6/NC-423

I did the easy-to-me route of taking the 43 to Forrester and Monterrey. From there, Google Maps plots out a walk to the mountain that looks like so:

and vertically speaking was far from the worst hike in the world:

Radio Details:

As I mentioned, the antenna went right up this time. The radio ran like the little champ that it is. Unlike when I was there over the weekend, I did not couple into the antenna. I could stand up, or sit down, and no matter. I did notice that the radio picks up sixty-cycle hum above a certain height (about 10 feet?) Below that height, the band is quieter, but also the radiation angle goes up. I found this out by taking time to experiment with antenna height and see that the Utah SDR finally picked up the RockMite in the morning again. It's been missing the little radio for a few weeks in the morning. Apparently Utah now bascially in the skip zone for the RockMite's typical antenna placement. This fits with the 20 dB+ results into Candada I've observed.

QSO/RBN spot map:

and a video review!

Happenings of Interest

I ran into the 'bird man' this morning. He walks the mountain every morning tracking migratory birds. It was a fun conversation.

QSO Log

Callsign	rx RST	tx RST	Time (GMT)	Frequency
K6EL	599	599	14:00	14058.3
NS2N	339	329	14:05	14058.3
N0RZ	449	599	14:10	14058.3
N0IPA	339	429	14:30	14058.3
WB7BWZ	539	579	14:33	14058.3
AD0WB	599	599	15:03	14058.3
W7CBR	559	339	15:20	14058.3
W7SKH	559	229	15:22	14058.3

POTA tx QSL:

QSL rx album:

References

SOTA (Mt. Davidson)

Comments

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