7940 is the second summit I activated for the SoCal Sota Fest up in Big Bear. After waking up at camp, I headed across the Holcomb Valley via 3N16 and parked the van just off the side of the road when I was close enough to the summit. I heard this would be easy to cycle, so brought my mountain bike and started climbing up. The road was recently graded and somewhat hard packed in some areas, so it was a pretty easy ride. Turns out this whole area is a strip mine, and these roads were graded for mining efforts. Other than a few parked earth moving machines, there was no actual mining activity, or official personal around at all. When I got to the the highest point I could find, I still wasn’t at the actual summit according to the GPS map; the actual summit had turned into a giant pit! Across this large pit, I could see two other stations in an area with some flora left, I think it was N1CLC and KX6I? After working a few stations on 2M, and SSB, two other hams came up to the summit, AE6NH and KG6MWQ, who setup a 4 element yagi for 2M. My HT picked up at least one packet from the APRS digipeater in Goldfield, NV, they pointed their beam that way. Worked 20m, 40m SSB, 30m CW and 2m FM. I packed my station up and blasted down the hill on the MTB. Excited to be in the shade with an ice cold drink from my cooler, I realized my GPS was not with me anymore, so I hiked all the way back up to the summit looking for it. Luckily I found it on the ground, a short distance from the gate.
https://sotl.as/summits/W6/CT-060
(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)
Max elevation: 7931 ft
Total climbing: 525 ft
Total time: 00:07:02
Date:07/08/2021 | Summit:W6/CT-060 (7940)
| Time | Callsign | Band | Mode | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15:57 | K6KWI | 144MHz | FM | S59 R59 S2S W6/CT-013 |
| 16:12 | K6TNT | 14MHz | SSB | S59 R59 S2S W6/CT-050 |
| 16:19 | K6ARK | 14MHz | SSB | S59 R59 S2S W6/CT-053 |
| 16:32 | NJ7V | 7MHz | CW | S599 R599 S2S W6/CT-054 |
| 16:45 | K7HZ | 10MHz | CW | S559 R559 |
| 16:53 | K5DEZ | 10MHz | CW | S559 R559 |
| 16:55 | K6MW | 10MHz | CW | S5NN R55N |
| 17:05 | K6LDQ | 144MHz | FM | S59 R57 |
| 17:06 | KN6GOG | 144MHz | FM | S59 R59 |
| 17:07 | NA6MG | 144MHz | FM | S59 R59 |
