SOTA/POTA/WWFF at Strawberry Point, Kane Co., UT During 10-Point Madness

It's been almost a month since I've been out. What better to draw me out than the weather finally getting better and the 10-point Madness of the W7A Association. It's easy access and includes all three organizations (being in Dixie National Forest).

In the area: Today is also the first day of hunting season, so there were tons of people out and about,

although right at the summit, there was hardly anyone since it's not a good area to hunt being a drop off and kind of close to private property. It was definitely cooler going up high, plus the aspens had changed to yellow and it looked good.

I didn't want to go too early, one since other activators wouldn't be on top of their mountains, but also so it wouldn't be quite as cold. With a hoodie it was just right the entire time. A bit windy when I started, but that calmed down some.

I took some preliminary pictures and video and got set up. My phone buzzed--I had less than 10% battery left. What?? How could that be? I need it to film as well as to check the spots to find summit-to-summit contacts. Then I realized--I had taken out the cord to charge the digital audio recorder but didn't switch it back out before going to bed. I did get an audio recording of it all at least. 

On the radio:

I got setup fairly quickly--I have been there numerous times before and knew where to setup. I posted

my first spot and shut my phone off. I had a call within the first minute. This was an 8-pointer and even with all the 10-pointers out there, I would get a lot of calls. I started getting S2S contacts. It was a very active day. I ended up with 34 QSO's (I stayed just under an hour on air) and of those 11 were summit-to-summits. Plus I got one Park-to-park, so it was a great success overall. Interestingly, CW is a much bigger part of SOTA and the chasers are more voracious than for POTA. Since starting POTA I've never had an activation with that many contacts.

This was the first time that my PicoPaddle had some issues. I always have to watch to not cut off dits at places, but this was a malfunction issue, very similar to what happened with the AME paddle. I've never cleaned it so that's most likely the issue, but we'll see.

Activation video: https://youtu.be/CLvzNTGefu8

Time	Callsign	Band	Mode	Notes
15:24	W4KAC	14MHz	CW
15:25	WB2FUV	14MHz	CW	S2S W2/GC-002
15:27	W0MNA	14MHz	CW
15:27	W0ERI	14MHz	CW
15:28	KE9AJ	14MHz	CW
15:29	AC1Z	14MHz	CW	S2S W3/PW-016
15:30	K3TCU	14MHz	CW
15:31	N1ZF	14MHz	CW	S2S W1/HA-157
15:32	KI4SVM	14MHz	CW	S2S W4T/SU-010
15:34	K2JB	14MHz	CW	S2S W4C/WM-010
15:35	KG3W	14MHz	CW
15:36	K7SDW	14MHz	CW
15:39	WD9F	14MHz	CW
15:40	NE4TN	14MHz	CW
15:41	N4CD	14MHz	CW
15:42	VE3LDT	14MHz	CW
15:43	AA5UZ	14MHz	CW
15:45	N4EX	14MHz	CW
15:45	WB2FUE	14MHz	CW
15:51	NA6MG	7MHz	CW	S2S W6/CT-242
15:54	NW7E	7MHz	CW
15:55	AA7OY	7MHz	CW	S2S W7A/AE-022
15:57	K6EL	7MHz	CW	S2S W6/NC-298
15:58	NN0G	7MHz	CW
15:59	N6JFD	7MHz	CW
16:00	KT5V	7MHz	CW
16:01	KR7RK	7MHz	CW	S2S W7A/CS-004
16:02	W5ODS	7MHz	CW
16:04	WC6J	7MHz	CW	S2S W6/NS-290
16:05	N0DET	7MHz	CW
16:06	WD5GRW	7MHz	CW	POTA P2P K-3005
16:08	K6TUY	7MHz	CW
16:08	N1SMB	7MHz	CW
16:16	KX0R	7MHz	CW	S2S W0C/SR-052

 Radio-related Equipment:

  YouKits HB-1B (qrp cw at 5 watts)

  Linked dipole, homebrewed (4 bands)

  25' RG-174 coax

  Picopaddle

  6 AH Bioenno

  Fishing pole mast

  Arrl paper minilog

  Earbuds

  Kinivo mini external speaker
Other gear:

  Leypin selfie stick tripod (for recording video)

  Clipboard

  Android MotoZ (US topo map app, spotting, UTC time, recording)

  Misc. items (for repair, food, water, etc.)

Thanks for reading!

72,

Mike ACØPR