I think back and wonder if maybe I should
have tried a little harder to get it to work with you and not
given up so easily.
I wasn’t able to spot myself due to cell
(Verizon) coverage unreliability. I noticed you spotted
yourself yesterday – who is your phone with?
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
