July was a slow month for SOTA; I had other obligations. Now, with most of them complete I decided to jump back in. My "go to" antenna was a home brew Buddipole. The antenna is great for the terrain and conditions here, but it doesn't seem to get the signal out the way I wanted, especially on 40M. I posted a thread on the SOTA reflector and based on the responses, decided to build a Buddistick. Since I decided to give up on doing only unique summits, Pistol Hill was the perfect location to test the new antenna. The first time I activated this summit I approached on the south side, walked the dirt road up and then bushwhacked to the top. This time I decided to try it from a different side and climbed up on the west side. I bushwhacked about halfway up and found a trail which went all the way to the top. When I followed the trail back down when I was down, I found that it actually went all the way down, about 20 feet from where I parked the truck. This is the way I will climb the next time I activate this summit. The Buddipole worked great. I managed to make many contacts on 40M and got much better RST from chasers. For the first test of the new antenna, this was a success. I know you can manipulate the arms on the commercial Buddipole etc, this might be something I do in the future. For now, I am going to continue testing/using the Buddistick.
