I planned to activate 3 peaks Thursday July
30 and Sat Aug 1. I only activated one (FR-123), with 3 QSO’s
and no activation points. A disappointing couple of days.
Lessons were learned that I will make use of going forward.
On Sunday August 2, I decided to chase and
thought I’d get at least three from Wilkerson Pass. So I
drove there and the terrain allowed easy QSO’s with N0EMU on
Badger Mtn (SP-072), K0JJW & K0NR on Mt White (SR-021) and
W0CP on 12792 (SP-042). I wasn’t sure about Mt White
beforehand because there are hills between Wilkerson and
anything south of Mt Princeton, but the results were perfect.
Wilkerson has a clear shot West to the
Collegiates and then back east to Pikes Peak, but to the
north, I was staring at the face of Badger Mountain and to the
south into some hills. I was glad to have the three chases
and thought that would be it, but I kept trying. I
successfully chased KX0R on Fairburn Mtn (SR-053) and KF0AUK
on San Luis Peak (SC-002).
Chasing KX0R on Fairburn (SR-053) was the
most interesting. I was pointing my yagi at Pikes Peak. Was
I getting reflection off of Pikes, or just going around Badger
off the side of my Yagi? I didn’t try aiming in different
directions since it was working enough to complete the QSO.
Chasing KF0AUK on San Luis Peak was also
interesting simply because of how hard we worked for it. I
could barely hear him. The fact that I had written down his
alert on my notepad and knew to expect him was very helpful.
My yagi was pointing south into the hills directly in front of
me so the signal was doing some bending.
The Wilkerson pass location proved to be
good for chasing those specific summits. There was also good
Verizon coverage there, allowing me to post spots for a couple
of the activators. The results there made up for the prior
frustration.
All of my QSO’s were on 2m FM, with the
exception of an extra QSO with K0NR on 446.
Jon R, KM4PEH
--
Jon
Richardson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-richardson/
GPG:
5454 B1B7 86ED 3A3C 4B11 015E
037D 98F5 2998 9CFE
