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A couple of friends and I did a trip to Kearsarge Mountain today. We had a fantastic time and made a couple of dozen nice contacts. Dave K1SWL, Tim W3ATB and I met at Kearsarge. The view was fantastic.

Dave brought his KX3 and put up a simple vertical wire 28 feet long. He sat at a picnic table directly under the wire and had a short counterpoise. The internal tuner managed the setup just fine. Dave made a dozen DX contacts mostly on 15 meters. I don’t have his log.

Tim brought his HB-1B and wanted to test out a 30 meter dipole he made. He plans to use it during an upcoming trip to Antigua. The antenna had a great SWR. After the test he switched to 20 meters and used his Par End Fed as a horizontal up about 25 feet. He made three stateside QSOs and was thrilled with the results.

I set up with a west facing view. I placed an inverted L up about 25 feet and across about 40 feet. I tuned the wire with the internal tuner on the KX3. I was hoping to make some SSB contacts in the military cross-band exercise and I had a mic out for awhile. But I abandoned that effort and went back to CW. Here’s my log:

9 May-15 1555 24.891 US5WE CW 599 599
9 May-15 1558 21.012 EA2NN CW 599 599
9 May-15 1600 21.026 SN7Q CW 599 599
9 May-15 1652 14.021 K3ZO CW 599 599
9 May-15 1655 18.087 AO150A CW 599 599
9 May-15 1657 21.021 HA3NU CW 599 599
9 May-15 1700 21.016 M0BEW CW 599 599
9 May-15 1701 24.891 US5WE CW 599 599
9 May-15 1705 18.082 R120K CW 599 599
9 May-15 1706 18.087 AO150A CW 599 599

I wasn’t paying attention and realized back home that I had several dupes.

We operated about an hour and a half and had a nice picnic lunch before heading down the mountain. Working DX was a lot easier today than battling the black flies. They were pretty thick and we were all glad to have a nice breeze and some bug spray handy. The little park area midway up the mountain makes a perfect place for operating on a beautiful day.

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