It was a rainy morning, 16 June 2006, quite unusual for the drought we have been seeing in Colorado. i was preparing to go up Trail Ridge Road in the Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) but the road was closed because it was snowing. i went up to the start of the road and decided to hike up to the top of Deer Mountain. It is just east of the Trail Ridge Road junction . After the precipiation stopped at 0900z, i started up the Deer Mt. Trail from the 8950 foot trail head. It is a 3.5 mile treck up the side of the 10,000 foot mountain. It has about 35 switchbacks on the steep part. The first mile is easy and has fairly good clearance for pedestrian mobile antennae. Then come the switchbacks, they are very narrow and there are lots of trees, a real bush wacker trail. i had to reduce my 10 foot whip down to 7 feet but was still able to work into CA on 20 meters. My SWR was 2:1 on the 7 foot untuned whip. i had a 1 hour Q with Guy, WB6HGJ, and several more Q's with him on the way back down the hill. i was able to get S7 signals on 20 and 30 meters. i could hear him on 40 meters but he couldn't hear me. i worked K0MLF in Utah on 40 meters. You can see the area at http://www.rmnp.com/RMNP-Areas-TrailRidge-DeerRidgeJunction.HTML i was running my KX1 on my external LiIon battery pack (4 - Sony US18650 cells) which was still good after 6 hours of operation. i put my KX1 in "Trail Mode" which sets the internal memory keyer on "Ply" and "RPT" and it sends "CQ de w0rw/pm" over and over with a 5 second space. Here is my Trail Log (most all on 14060 kHz): W7ITN Joe ID WA3RML Andy TX WB6HGJ Guy CA, 3 QSO's (one was 1 hour long) W7GVE Ed AZ KF0N Larry IA K4LJA/5 Randy LA K0MLF Don UT 40 meters. Paul w0rw/pm _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
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