Introduction

This weekend I had the chance to activate South Beacon Mountain, W2/EH-003. I’ll detail my summit up, my equipment, and my future improvements.

View from the top. Unobstructed in many directions

The Summit: South Beacon Mountain

South Beacon Mountain stands overlooking the city of Beacon, NY but offers clear views in any direction. You could see parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York into the Catskills from the top. South Beacon Mountain has a firetower at the top (not to be confused with North Beacon, which also has a fire tower but is just a little shorter) and gives great views after its 100ft ascension:

Here’s a good hike and parking lot directions. Get there early since the park overfills past about 0900 on weekends.

This mountain is also famously home to the Mount Beacon Repeater where the Hudson Valley Net checks in every night. I obviously forgot to bring a handheld, but I imagine I could reach CT pretty easily from the elevation.

Equipment

I changed my setup again, unsurprisingly. I have been watching some videos from Adam K6ARK and build his random-wire antenna out of some spare parts. I will make a build post after I put some finishing touches, but it is essentially a 9:1 balun with a 41ft conductor and 17ft ground radial. My full equipment list can be shown here:

Random Wire Antenna sitting at my desk

1. An Elecraft KX2 with standard CW paddle
2. A 5.2 Ah lithium-ion battery
3. My favorite antenna tuner
4. The K6ARK Random Wire
5. 1 8oz. Fishing lures

Total weight - about 2lbs. I brought just the essentials and some warm clothes / water. The random wire was much easier for stringing in the trees:

1. Throw the counterpoise along the ground
2. Tie the lure to the end of the random wire
3. Chuck
4. Tune

Setup at the top

N2WU Operating

Excursion

I managed to bring along Porter, KN6OLH for some joint operating on the summit. We both enjoyed the harder-than-expected hike up. The total distance is about 3.7 miles with a steep first half and moderately flat second half. It was slippery with wet leaves, so be cautious and aware of the terrain.

KN6OLH at the firetower

The Casino trail takes you past interesting ruins and the North Beacon peak, where the radio stations are. Ruins site, a former power station of some sort.

Contacts

Sunspot cycle 25 again proves its worthiness. I had a problem hearing US stations, yes, but only because I heard so many European stations. I have to thank the SOTA Spotting system. I got an immediate pileup using SOTA-Watch only.

I operated CW 10W, but snuck in a 10W SSB contact with Stephen KJ5HY. Here’s my contact list and a KML generated with advice by Steve K2GOG using the ADIF-KML program.

Contact List

Google Earth Contacts

Conclusion

South Beacon Mountain is a not-so-simple summit with great views of the Hudson Valley. I had great propagation conditions using a new antenna and will be improving my setup in the future with more ultra-portable equipment.

-N2WU