SOTA Mt. Davidson de KD0FNR: Mosquitos and Propagation Strangeness

There was a lot going on this morning. Propagation was almost exclusively to the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains; I successfully used an atlatl to launch the attena twine; and the RockMite reached Japan!.

There were so many mosquitos up there this morning, I managed to get a rain coat on farily soon, but I'm so going to pay for that. The recent rains left a couple of largeish puddles near my usual antenna spot, and the mosquitos took adavantage.

Park:

Mt. Davidson W6/NC-423

I finally lighted on what I believe is the easiest public transit route for an early morning arrival at the summit—keep in mind, the park opens at 5:00 AM PST. Catch the 43 at Geneva and Mission, or you're favorite stop. Ride to Juanita—yup, that is the first step of the gang's and my original route. Here's the change: wiggle through the streets to Dalewood, and make your entire ascent there. In aboout 10 minutes, you'll be at the trailhead next to the 36 bus stop. This is much faster than the 43 to Forrester and Monterey trial. Perhaps not as gentle, but faster. (Pay no attention to Google's 'mostly flat' bullshit in the route map below.)

In any event, it's a nice fast route that can be reached early in the morning by public transit. Here it is:

Radio Details and Gear:

I saw that the qrper.com trip reports include a gear list. I hadn't ever thought about it before, so I figured I try it out. Interesting, or no?

Radio: A green board Rockmite 20. You can get the red board kit at QRPMe.

Antenna: 12 gauge wire cut to a half-wave dipole, mounted directly to the radio via a BNC to Banana Plug converter.

Antenna mount: two spools of butcher's twine

8 x Duracell Optimum AA batteries

Moleskine Volant Journal

Stabilo Point 88 Fineliner Pen - 0.4 mm - Black

Ethernet CAT-5 Cable (35 foot length) [My current cable was borrowed from a local makerspace. The link points to the replacement I ordered. I'll keep you posted on how well it works.]

QSO/RBN spot map:

Happenings of Interest

The mapping data really paid off for me on this outing. The QSP pattern seemed a bit tight to the East. Specifically, all but two of the QSOs, (one in town, and one to Japan), were to the eastern side of the Rockies. Here are the mapped QSOs and RBN spots:

(also see the map above.)

I wondered if this was a feature of antenna placement at Mt. Davidson. This turned out to be an easy question to answer by looking at a map of the April 15 Mt. Davidson POTA QSOs,

where it can be seen that almost all of the QSOs were to the west of the Rockies. Go figure. I'm guessing it has something to do with the height of the F2 layer. I'm not an expert at reading ionosonde charts yet, but what I do notice comparing charts from the two outings is that h`F2 is much higher on the 5th of May than it was on the 15th of April:

May 5th, 2023:

April 15th, 2023:

I'm left wondering what an analysis like the one for Petroglyph National Monument would show, but anyway.

And Also!!! I had a QSO with JG0AWE for the second time from Mt. Davidson—or anywhere for that matter.

QSO Log

Callsign	rx RST	tx RST	Time (GMT)	Frequency
AD5IT	559	559	2023/05/05 13:15:00	14058.4
NE2P	229	339	2023/05/05 13:32:00	14058.4
N3AFS	439	439	2023/05/05 13:40:00	14058.4
K0LAF	329	339	2023/05/05 13:48:00	14058.4
W5ODS	579	569	2023/05/05 14:08:00	14058.4
K6EL	599	599	2023/05/05 14:46:00	14058.4
NY4G	339	339	2023/05/05 14:42:00	14058.4
JG0AWE	539	559	2023/05/05 15:00:00	14058.4

POTA tx QSL:

QSL rx album:

References

Arguello Pt. Ionosonde

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