Monthly Archives: February 2026

W6/SD-010 – Ord Mountain

Posted on by

This was my third summit for SoCal Winter SOTA Fest 2026

I woke up in the morning, headed down to the hotel restaurant, and ordered breakfast with coffee. My knees were feeling “okay” but I was worried about doing more summits after East Ord destroyed them. I figured I could try an “easy” summit today so I headed out to Stoddard Mountain, W6/SD-060. Once I got close to the bottom of Stoddard, I parked the truck, slathered on some sunscreen and started a slow ascent. My knees were hurting. About 1/4 mile up, I wanted to make sure I could actually get down without stabbing knife pains, so I walked back a bit, and my knees were screaming. There was no way I could get up and down any summit today, so I continued back to the truck with the plan of heading home to Los Angeles early.

Over 2M, I heard two local hams at the Slash X Cafe talking about how they were heading up to Ord Mountain. I interjected, introduced myself, and asked if I could joint them, and they agreed! I headed over to the Slash X to meet up with them, and after a quick chat we were on our way. (I’m leaving out all of details on who/ how we got up there) Once at the top I used a 2M HT and called CQ, which was quickly answered by others activating in the area. Two S2S. From there, I went on 2M CW with a yaesu 817 and got two more QSOs. I didn’t want my hosts to stand around waiting for me to work HF bands, so I signed QRT and packed up.

https://sotl.as/summits/W6/SD-010

Date:17/01/2026 |  Summit:W6/SD-010 (Ord Mountain) 

TimeCallsignBandModeDistance (km)Notes
21:51W6LOR144MHzFMS59 R59
21:52K6STR144MHzFMS59 R59
21:52KE6SRN144MHzFMS59 R59
21:53KE6SRO144MHzFMS59 R59
21:53K6TW144MHzFMS59 R59
21:55K6CPR144MHzFM13S2S W6/SD-116 S59 R59
21:57AK6IY144MHzFM127S2S W6/CT-019 S45 R57
22:03K6STR144MHzCW107%QRA%DM15MP%
22:04NT6E144MHzCW174%QRA%DM03TU%
This is the bottom of Stoddard, heavy rains earlier in the year made the desert quite green!
Ord helipad, my host took this photo of me.
Away from the communications equipment at the top.
Heading down!

Winter Field Day 2026

Posted on by

I’m not a contester, but I like listening to fast CW and casually making QSOs with more serious folks. I think this makes me a better operator too. This year, I wanted to experiment with computer logging and computer generated CW. Everything was setup on my picnic table and run off a battery. I ended up spending most of the day hanging out with my BBQ, but I still made time to get several QSOs in the log. I had fun, and I’m going to do it again in the future. Notes for future me below, so I can remember how to do it next time.

https://winterfieldday.org

Laptop is a eWaste Chromebook running Debian 13 from a fresh install
apt install btop screen pipx flrig
pipx install winkeyerserial
pipx install wfdlogger
pipx ensurepath
groupadd dialout <user>

Connect a winkeyer, then run winkeyserial in a terminal. I used a Open CW MK2 keyer from Aliexpress, around $30. This should show up at /dev/ttyUSB0. If everything is working, the speed knob on the font of the unit should change the speed in the winkeyserial gui.

Connect USB CAT cable to the radio, run flrig and configure baud rate and port (probably /dev/ttyUSB1). Setup server port so wdflogger can record band changes. I can’t remember what the logging program uses when I wrote this but it’s easy to find.

Run wfdlogger in a terminal. This will open a gui. Set callsign, class, and ARRL section. Start logging QSOs, don’t burn whatever is on the grill and have fun. Oh, can you grab me another beer from the fridge if you go inside?

Software
https://github.com/mbridak/WinterFieldDayLoggerSoftware
https://github.com/mbridak/PyWinKeyerSerial

Hardware
Yaesu 857D
W4LMT’s Bencher key
Open CW Keyer mk2
Trashtop

Power
Cheap, deep cycle battery from the auto parts store
100W solar panel
Amazon charge controller

Antennas
Aliexpress stainless vertical
EFHW, 40M (49:1 + ~66′ of wire)

My 2026 station
This thing is rad.