The cabin on Burke was full of killer bees which made it risky to clean up the property. I contacted the High Desert Bee Keeping Society asking if anyone wanted to take the mean bees, but they informed me Landers bees were extremely aggressive, and they should be exterminated. At first, I thought it would be easy enough to buy a $30 Amazon prime bee suit and spray the hives down with bug spray, and call it a day. Kel wouldn’t let me do that so we called a local pest control company. After the first treatment, the bees seemed more pissed off than before. A second treatment didn’t take them out either. Finally, after the third visit, the pest control company said they just need to remove the hive (something I wanted to do to save money) because there were still pissed off bees everywhere. I happily obliged. The pest control company ripped out the wall from the inside of the cabin and the hive was bigger than I imagined! Photos below.
Kel and I hiked up W6/CT-146, Hoyt Mountain. This is worth 4 points for SOTA folks. Parking is just off Highway 2, at Grizzly Flat Trailhead. Once you’re there, follow the big fire road. Stay to the right at the split by the old water tank base. Eventually, the road kinda just stops under the high tension power lines at the top. It took a bit of time to find, but here is a narrow, somewhat overgrown trail right in the middle of the hill which goes up to the summit. Further up, the trail gets better and more defined. This bit was somewhat challenging for me, and presents you with a few false summits.
I started out working 2M FM thinking someone could spot me on SOTAWatch. To my surprise, I could only get a single station! I’m generally able to get tons of 2M contacts, but this was a holiday weekend so….. I setup my HF station – Yaesu 817 into a resonant vertical antenna cut for 20M, supported by a squid pole. While doing this, I figured out how to self spot using the APRS-> SOTA gateway. After getting a message back from the system informing me I was spotted, I started calling out on 14.340Mhz, where I was immediately picked up by W0MNA in Kansas, followed by ZL2IFB in New Zealand, my first QRP/ SOTA DX station. 🙂 I made several more contacts, noticed the time and started packing down the station when I found the radio was configured to transmit at 2.5 watts. No wonder I was getting 44~47 signal reports. The hike down is the reverse of the way up. Overall, this is a fun hike.
Date:30/Nov/2019 Summit:W6/CT-146 (Hoyt Mountain)
Time
Call
Band
Mode
Notes
09:55z
AI6SP
144MHz
FM
10:15z
W0MNA
14MHz
SSB
10:17z
ZL2IFB
14MHz
SSB
10:18z
WU7H
14MHz
SSB
10:19z
W0ERI
14MHz
SSB
10:20z
N4EX
14MHz
SSB
10:21z
N5HA
14MHz
SSB
10:22z
K6LDQ
14MHz
SSB
10:25z
K5SVV
14MHz
SSB
10:28z
KI6EAB
14MHz
SSB
Total distance: 2.41 mi Max elevation: 4409 ft Min elevation: 2969 ft Average speed: 0.00 m/s
I picked up a $6 Pixie kit on eBay, which included shipping from China and nice case for the finished radio. The kit didn’t come with any kind of instructions, so I needed to find a schematic that matched the PCB. Over all, it was a fun build, and one I would recommend to a new ham, or anyone wanting to get into kit building.
I broke the LCD screen on my favorite radio. Luckily, a new display was $0.97 from Yaesu in California. A bit of exploratory disassembly and fiddling with zebra stripes, and the display is back to normal!
November 10th, 2019. This was a quick activation. I cycled up to the top, made 10 contacts, and was back at the starting point within an hour. Getting to the actual summit is impossible as there is a fence to keep folks out of the antenna area. I didn’t bother setting up the HF station, so I just worked local 146.520 Mhz, 2M FM using the Yaesu 817. RF levels felt high, as my HT was struggling to pull signals from the Mount Wilson repeater which is line of sight to this point. Furthest contact goes to WB2WIK, who was near the Ventura County line.
Date:10/Nov/2019 Summit:W6/CT-225 (Flint Peak)
Time
Call
Band
Mode
Notes
22:08z
KM6CEM
144MHz
FM
22:10z
K6LDQ
144MHz
FM
22:12z
KI6UCN
144MHz
FM
22:12z
KK6TDU
144MHz
FM
22:15z
KA6JAC
144MHz
FM
22:15z
WB2WIK
144MHz
FM
22:19z
KA6HGT
144MHz
FM
22:20z
KK6ZVQ
144MHz
FM
22:25z
KN6CJK
144MHz
FM
22:28z
KN6DFX
144MHz
FM
Total distance: 0.7 mi Max elevation: 1854 ft Min elevation: 1493 ft Average speed: 0.00 m/s
November 9th, 2019 – This was the second summit of the day with Lars, KJ6CBE. The hike up, and down from this point was uncomfortable for me with loose sand and rocks most of the way. The trail starts very steep, then follows the ridge line (also steep) up to a false summit where it flattens out for a bit. Continue along the trail to reach the real summit. I worked 40M, and 20M SSB. Lars worked 2M FM. The radial system on my vertical antenna broke, leaving me with higher SWR than I wanted on 20M. Still made a contact to the east coast. Not bad for 5W at solar minimum.
Date:09/Nov/2019 Summit:W6/CT-150
Time
Call
Band
Mode
Notes
21:35z
K6HPX
7MHz
SSB
21:36z
W6JP
7MHz
SSB
21:38z
K6LDQ
7MHz
SSB
21:41z
KC6ARY
7MHz
SSB
W6/CT-015
21:43z
WC6J
7MHz
SSB
21:45z
K6VVV
7MHz
SSB
21:53z
N4EX
14MHz
SSB
21:54z
WW7D
14MHz
SSB
21:59z
N0RZ
14MHz
SSB
Total distance: 0.54 mi Max elevation: 4209 ft Min elevation: 3642 ft Average speed: 0.00 m/s
November 9th, 2019. I like this summit. I’ve been up to this location before, not knowing about SOTA. It’s a pretty easy hike with rewarding views. The original fire lookout tower was destroyed in the 2009 Station Fire. 10 years later, they are constructing a new lookout. Lars, KJ6CBE worked 146.520 FM and I worked 20M SSB. My furthest QSO was W4KRN in Virginia. Thanks!
Here is how I run Pat with AX25. This assumes Direwolf can key your radio for 2M/ 1200 baud connections to local nodes. I’ve yet to get this actually working, as I live in hole which RF can’t seem to escape.
Run Direwolf, with APRS stuff commented out of the config file. The -p and -c flags are needed.
$sudo direwolf -p -c direwolf_noaprs.conf
This will give a symlink, such as:
Virtual KISS TNC is available on /dev/pts/1 Created symlink /tmp/kisstnc -> /dev/pts/1
Take note of the device number, in this case, /dev/pts/1 Bind the port to AX.25
$ kissattach /dev/pts/1 wl2k AX.25 port wl2k bound to device ax0
Then, run pat. I use a bunch of arguments here, you don need to.
$pat --listen ardop,ax25,telnet http -a 0.0.0.0:8080
Open a browser, and load pat interface on :8080. Please note 0.0.0.0 allows connections from other machines, not just localhost which is useful for VPN.
You noticed that I included ardop in the config – this is a HF modem which needs separate command line arguments for configuration. Basic config is below. 8515 is the port, plughw is the USB sound card for I/O. Find the audio cards by typing aplay -l into the terminal
I really want all my radio junk to run off a single power supply and interconnect with Anderson Power Poles, so I modified a Baofeng charger base to do just that!
A few different bases, Pofung y Baofeng. Both came with a UV5R of some kind.Different moldings, different stickers.Insides somewhat different, same circuit though. (see below)Used a bunch of diodes to bring the voltage down.Fitted with cable and Anderson Power PolesAll done! Works well!Oh, this is the IC managing the charger. HXN-WS 1116
