Introduction

I am glad to report my first successful SOTA activation of Green Mountain W0C/FR-085. In this post I will detail my summit up, my activation, and future plans. Lace up and continue reading!

Title Image View from the top!

The Summit: Green Mountain

Green Mountain is a beautiful summit right in the municipality of Boulder. I took the EM Greenman Trail and option three on this this post.

Equipment

Like I said previously, I brought the following equipment:

  1. An Elecraft KX2 with standard CW paddle
  2. A 5.2 Ah lithium-ion battery
  3. An APRS-enabled TH-D72a (forgot I had the extremely low power option enabled)
  4. My favorite antenna tuner
  5. A 19-foot mast
  6. A linked end-fed
  7. A linked dipole for 10m,20m,40m
  8. 1L water, warm clothes, and gloves
  9. A notebook/pen for CW
  10. Several (40) feet of paracord in different lengths

The pack weighed probably about 12lbs. It fit nicely and weighed light enough for me to run for some portions.

Equipment Equipment scattered at the top

Excursion

I would be lying if I said the route wasn’t tough! I definitely recommend keeping on the trail - much better than how I got lost previously. Great view of boulder the entire way up, and at the top!

View View of Boulder from Green Mountain facing east

Contacts

I tried the end-fed, but didn’t have 60ft on the summit to properly set it up. I instead went with the linked dipole and the antenna mast, mostly since I wanted to justify bringing it the whole summit. I decided to just fix the end wire to the ground since I was relatively a few wavelengths above the ground.

Antenna Dipole at the top. Many good questions about ham radio!

I felt bad for taking up part of the summit with my setup, but I did try to entertain those who looked interested. I usually reference Independence Day as a baseline!

S2S with WV0X

I heard Syzmon WV0X on simplex 2m. I managed to get him using just my rubber ducky! Overall I got 7 contacts. I especially was grateful for David N0DET who found me on simplex, then on CW.

I did have to ignore someone who would not slow down CW. Pleas of QRS went ignored, and I was going 17 WPM!

Conclusion

View with antennas

This hobby definitely allows for some fantastic pictures. I began the descent and felt pretty good, so I ran the way down. The backpack felt very light, so it is a winning combination for sure.

APRS APRS Descent

In the future (very soon) I will be activating CO013 and CO014 as a US Islands and POTA. Stay tuned!

Additionally, I would love to include FT8 on my DXpeditions but can’t justify bringing a laptop. I am searching around for Raspberry Pi setups, but cannot find anything elegant enough. I may try to code with the software in the future.