Fwd: SOTA Experience Report (W6/SC-352, March 1, 2020)

[Mooneer Salem]

Resending to strip out photos. 

-Mooneer K6AQ

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Mooneer Salem <moo...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 1, 2020 at 1:56 PM
Subject: SOTA Experience Report (W6/SC-352, March 1, 2020)
To: <ma...@nasota.groups.io>, <soca...@googlegroups.com>, <digita...@googlegroups.com>

Hi all,

Just got back from being on Mt. Helix this morning and wanted to share my experience activating a summit using digital voice (FreeDV and DMR). Overall, I managed to get the four contacts solely using digital voice modes but did learn a few things along the way.

First, I ended up arriving around 9:30am to begin setup. I noticed a truck in the parking lot with what looked like a HF mobile antenna on the roof. Unfortunately he was in fact using the antenna and I ended up hearing him in my KX3 on both 20 and 40 meters at ~S9. There was a fair bit of distance (horizontal and vertical) between me and him, too, so he was probably running high power. I decided to activate on DMR first as a result.

To find contacts on DMR simplex, I used one of the local repeaters to get into the San Diego Hangout talk group (310014). Fortunately I got a response pretty quickly and made the first three contacts very quickly on simplex. Thanks goes out to KC2GNV for putting out the word in the local area. :)

My final contact was using FreeDV on HF. By that point, the aforementioned truck had left, so HF was usable again. I plugged in my SM1000 microphone that I thought I had wired properly for the RJ45 jack but it turns out that I possibly only wired TX correctly as I heard nothing but hum--even when I tried listening to WWV in analog mode. This is something I'll have to investigate further.

Initially thinking it was an issue with the SM1000 itself, I tried calling CQ a few times on 20 and 40 meters using my backup device (Microsoft Surface 3). It ended up clicking at that point that it was probably the cable I had made, so I switched back to the SM1000 (but using the 3.5mm jacks instead of the RJ45). Those worked significantly better, and with the help of K5WH on the AMSAT talkgroup (98006) and the Hardrock-50 amp I brought, was able to make my fourth contact.

All in all a fun morning. Some things I learned:

1. Backups are always good. I'd likely would have had to abandon FreeDV for the activation otherwise.

2. My full size vertical for 20 meters using the MFJ long whip seemed to perform reasonably well on 40 using the KX3's built in tuner and 10 watts--at least according to the KFS SDR up in the Bay Area. Even 5 watts seemed to show a signal being received. I'll have to listen to the recordings later to see if those decode. 

3. I definitely need a smaller/more lightweight QRP amp if I'm going to be hiking to summits and doing DV in the future. (Really, I need to lighten the backpack in general. Fortunately today's was drive-up except for a short walk up to the top of the amphitheater/summit.)

4. Actually test everything! I had tested TX and spent most of my time tuning audio levels to make sure I didn't overdrive but didn't actually test RX (except with a DMM to make sure there was continuity where I expected). I possibly would have been able to fix the issue had I known sooner.

5. RF detection on the Hardrock wasn't as reliable as I had hoped. I'm not sure if it was a loose connection or if there was another issue. If I continue using it for activations it might be worthwhile to switch to having the amp be keyed by the KX3 instead.

[ed: photos stripped due to size]

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ