K0SSK

Welcome back friends! It’s been a while since the last blog post - I was busy (and lazy!) Time to clean the backlog up a bit and write about Clouds Rest aka W6/SS-257 activation.

The Bay Area was extremely smoky in the middle of September and I hoped I could get some cleaner air higher in Eastern Sierra. Right before my planned trip all national forests had been closed due to fires. Sequoia National park started to burn as well and winds pushed smoke toward Yosemite. I decided to go anyway - if there is no escape from ash I’ll breathe ash with a view at least.

Hey-hey friends! If you read my previous post you know I’ve built a QCX+ kit from QRP Labs recently. Naturally I was eager to try the rig in the field but at the same time I didn’t feel like doing any serious hike plus I wanted to maximize the probability of a successful activation. Ideally the summit should be close to a ham brood, the hike should not be boring but still allow to bring some backup equipment just in case QCX+ fails me.

Meet Mount Caroline Livermore W6/CC-075 in the Angel Island State Park located (quite unsurprisingly) on Angel Island, the second largest in San Francisco bay.

Hello friends! Not a SOTA activation report this time. I took a break and spent some time with a soldering iron in my hands!

SOTA is not only about hikes and operating radios but also about building your rigs and antennas. When a heap of dead and cold components turns into a radio one can use to make contact with people hundreds miles away it is pure magic. This never gets old. So I couldn’t be happier when Hans G0UPL announced he’s updating his excellent QCX transceiver kit.

I’ve immediately pre-ordered the upgraded version.

Welcome back friends! Yet another activation report - this time our target is Half Dome in Yosemite national park or as SOTA people know it W6/SN-040.

This trip almost didn’t happen. I had completely different plans for the last weekend of July 2020 but for good or for bad these plans became obsolete mid week. The best Plan B I could come up with was to curl up under a blanket and marathon the extended cut of Lord of the Rings. But. I needed a new Plan A.

If you read my previous blog posts you know I spent some time in Lassen Volcanic national park trying to activate Brokeoff mountain (W6/CN-003) and successfully activated Lassen peak (W6/CN-002). So what’s next? Well, the elefant in the room is, you guessed it, W6/CN-001 also known as Mount Shasta.

This mountain is a very special place for me. It comes with glaciers, thin air and scorching sun. It has everything you’d expect from a “real” mountain and then some. I tried to climb it in 2017 first time and had to turn back from the bottom of Misery Hill.

This experience made a great impact on me. It changed the way I see nature and my own place in it.