Took a new ham & friend (who’s interested in learn code and using it in the filed) up Mt Herman this morning to experience his first SOTA activation! We were on 17/20m SSB. Stellar morning sunny 60s with a few white puffy clouds.
I set up the KX2 on 17m, thru a wire up a tree and took the first shift ...then halted the pile and said "standby for a change of operators" Eric/W0RLY took over ...he was in the hot seat working over a dozen stations coast to coast in just minutes! Of course he couldn’t stop grinning the whole time! (Photo of log page is only half of his QSOs!) He did great!! Suddenly we hear a big roar of (5)-F16s (Thunderbirds) buzzing the mountain actually flying below us as they practiced for AFA graduation ceremony coming soon. (Red circle in center of the enlarged pic!) Then my MH3 mic developed a intermittent open-short so it was good to have my tiny back up mic! The little cell phone mic recently converted worked excellent! (also had KX2’s internal mic but prefer the "PTT" mic) ...Busy day! Grand finale! ...I then work SOTA friend in UK -- Phil/G4OBK in PICKERING England Wow! ...he was using 150w to a 3-el yagi to my little KX2 using a 29' wire in tree @ 25' w/10w SSB!!! Woohoo! ...made my day! Who says the bands are dead!? Steve/wGOAT Sound file of Phil (rough QRM!): https://soundcloud.com/goathiker/g4obk Photos: https://flic.kr/s/aHskAMQb5N ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com