Closed Road – Sand Canyon

Cell Coverage: Verizon LTE

Elevation: 4,619ft

Location: 34.6410977°N, -118.4134145°W

Well originally I was going to activate W6/CT-158 4020 which is real close to Camp 9 Fire Station. Little did I know the jerks with the county closed off the road. Can we have anything?!?

Trying to beat the heat as we have been well over 100 the past few days I opted for Grass Mountain. It was across a couple of valleys and only took another 45 minutes to get to.

The drive up to the summit of Grass Mountain was good, however the road is starting to see some erosion from the rains we had this year. While this is a drive up summit I made sure to park down the road and hoof it a bit… not too far though, where’s the fun in that? Setup was easy as I found the same dying/dead tree I used the last time. It has a perfect nook where you can set your Jackite and lash it too the branch. Wind wasn’t bad either, and the partly cloudy skies where a dream.

Setting Up

I always struggle with what band I am going to start with. Mainly because of propagation and what not. Usually I start with 40 meters, but this time I tried 20 meters first. Holy cow was it a pileup! I think I had 10 contacts all in a row on 20m. 40m not so much, only 2. Usually 40m is my goldmine.

Once I finished I had some coffee and packed things up. Did I mention there where little flies buzzing about everywhere? Drove me nuts!

As always thank you for reading and I will see you on the bands.

73,

Ryan WC6Q

Setting up the dipole

Setting up Dipole.