Winter weather is easing up in southeast Washington, so my friend Bob (WV7W) and I planned to hike up the easiest and closest summit to us, W7W/WE-046 (Candy Mountain). We picked a spectacular day, with a light breeze and temps in the low 50s. The hike to the top takes about 45 minutes and climbs about 780 feet. There are a couple of nice concrete benches at the top, which we found unused. They made a great operating station.
After a disappointing POTA outing earlier in the year, we decided to try operating in tandem rather than concurrently. This was made all the easier because SOTA requires only 4 QSOs for a valid activation. I wanted Bob to go first in case we fished out the supply of available chasers, but we needn’t have worried. Bob is better equipped for this sort of operation than I am, and we set up his SOTABeams Carbon 6 with a K6ARK EFHW plugged into his KX2. He started on 20m, spotted himself, and called CQ exactly twice before the pile started. After a few QSOs he was actually looking for a break to give me a chance but had racked up 12 QSOs before that break came.
We took a short pause and tuned up on 17m. Although I got only 10 QSOs, two of those were from Japan so I was luckier with the propagation. There is, and always will be, a special thrill to working across the ocean on 5 watts.
All photos courtesy of Bob WV7W
