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!
Yaesu part number for the LCD is G6090181
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.
https://summits.sota.org.uk/summit/W6/CT-225
(Update 05-09-2022 – a server migration, plugin and php update revealed the timestamps on this .gpx file are broken. I’ve added fake times so this page renders correctly)
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 |
