SOTA The Easy Way: Driving Up Mounts Equinox and Ascutney
Sometimes you just want to take the easy way up, ya know? So after our pretty intense backpacking Summits-On-The-Air trek the week before, this week we wanted to lazily drive up a couple peaks for our points. And of course, once we get a little taste of sleeping outdoors…well, we want to keep it up. Below is a montage of the summit of Mount Equinox (Bennington County VT), the first stop on this mellow adventure. Can you find me operating? I am in one of the photos.
We swiftly completed the activation and drove (do you see a theme here?) to our lean-to campsite in Jamaica State Park in Jamaica VT. Lean-to camping is an absolute delight. Just bring a tarp for the platform…
…a tarp for a screen…
…and some pizza…
…And you are ready for a night out in the woods! If you look carefully, you can see that there are three sleeping spots set up with sleeping mats and sleeping bags. When we camp out, we always make sure Nellie (our dog) has both an insulated pad and a warm bag. In our experience, indoor dogs cannot tolerate cold weather very well.
It actually took a lot longer to set up the 40M (above) and 80M (below) OCF dipoles than it did to prepare the lean-to. Anyone who worries about setting up antennas on a campsite, just remember that you are looking at a 135 foot long temporary antenna erected in a public campground. Really the biggest concern is making sure that a wire antenna is high enough to be over the heads of all people, animals, and vehicles.
Marc made nearly a hundred contacts on the 40M OCF for a Parks-On-The-Air activation of Jamaica State Park. I went with 80M and FT8, scoring over 20 digital qsos. This is a great way to continue a POTA activation after quiet hours!
We slept fairly well, woke up late, packed up, and made the drive (again!) over to and up Mt. Ascutney. This time we would have to walk about 1.5 miles roundtrip to the summit.
This the view from the near-summit parking lot.
The commercial radio infrastructure on the summit of Mt. Ascutney is pretty intense. This tower is seen best from the parking lot on top of a false summit.
And this view IS the summit of Ascutney. The human and dog are AA1F and Nellie.
One of the themes of Mt. Ascutney is apparently gliding. Here is a glider plane that floated over us…
And here is the path to where the hang gliders jump off. In fact, I just randomly found this video of some folks doing just that.
We moved into the woods and set up our stations. Keep in mind that light weight backpacking tarps are very handy. I bring one along almost any time I am heading into the woods these days. Below, AA1F is taking a break from a robust 20M activation with his trusty EFHW antenna.
Don’t mistake my smile for being particularly good-humored. I had a very difficult activation on the 40M OCF. In fact, I did not think I was going to make my 4 contacts. It was one of those weird radio days where you are not entirely sure your transceiver is working.
I think Nellie may be getting a bit exasperated with our radio adventures… You could tell she was just ready to go home. Did you notice my winter hat? It was 50 degrees at midday on the summit in late September.
We went back to the van and drove home. Twelve points closer to the thousand we need to get our SOTA Mountain Goat awards. I am now the 20th top activator in the W1 (New England) region for SOTA. What does it mean or matter? Because it’s there.
KM1NDY