I made a couple attempts over the last couple weeks to do a SOTA; I am just not feeling it anymore. I even drove to the base of a summit, looked at it, turned around and went and did something else. Today was more of the same, but due to the difficulty of the road (miner's cut) to get to the base, I forced myself to hike up. It was a pretty straight forward hike, no serious issues or obstacles. When I got to the activation zone, I set up a MFJ-1899T, which I am testing to see if it is an alternative to using the random wire on summits that do not have trees; it's not. On the previous summit, I got ZERO contacts, this summit I got 1. Unlike the previous summit, I was not in the mood to unpack the random wire and try to get the points. I am not going for any awards, so getting the one contact and getting credit for the summit is enough. I am trying to make my pack as minimal as possible, but I am really going to have to rethink the antenna. The most fun part of SOTA for me is the CW and I am not getting many contacts at all, while I see other activators getting dozens. I am going to have to work that out.
