Jun 3, 2020

7 Day SOTA Recap, New KB1HQS video and Down East Portable Radio Expedition

Revue

June 3 · Issue #29 · View online

One Journey Ends, Another Begins!

Contents

KB1HQS Video: Hiking the Knife Edge to Mt Katahdin
Instagram
7 Days of SOTA Recap
Upcoming Portable Activation’s
Cool Ham Stuff

KB1HQS Videos: Hiking the Knife Edge to Mt Katahdin

Hiking the Knife Edge trail to Mt. Katahdin for a successful Summits on the Air activation.

Instagram

I’m now on Instagram!

KB1HQS de Instagram

Recap: 7 Days of SOTA

7 Days of SOTA Activation’s was completed thanks to all the chasers who contacted me. I was able to activate 6 out of the 7 summits.

Some stats:

62 QSO’s completed
38 miles hiked; 9,126 feet in elevation climbed.
Two pieces of gear broken
Only fell down once!
8 Red Bulls Consumed

Trip reports:

Upcoming Portable Activation's

Donnel Ponds Public Lands in Maine

I’m heading up near Bangor, ME to hammer out two SOTA summits, Schoodic Mountain(W1/EM-16) & Black Mountain (W1/EM-013). These two summits are located within the Donnel Ponds Public Lands. This area doesn’t get a lot of visitors and has camping spots right on the lake.

Date: June 4-5th, 2020

Time: ~1600z activation time

I will be camping out overnight and activating a summit each day.

Down East Maine

Back in the early days of me sailing on the Schooner Appledore as a deckhand

Up until this point the farthest east I have been in Maine is Mount Desert Island. Beyond Bar Harbor, Maine the population thins out considerably which leads to vast areas to explore. This region is known as Down East Maine, a carryover from the sailing days when sailing ships sailed north by northeast on the predominate southwest winds during the summer.

Down East Maine has several areas that I want to explore and operate portable QRP.

Downeast Maine Sites

June 6th, 2020

Sunday I will head to the most north eastern part of the United States to camp at Cutler Coast Public Reserved Land which has campsites right on the ocean. It’s a five mile hike in and first come, first served with no reservations. If the campsites are full, we will hike and then head home.

*Note: Cutler is also home to the Navy VLF Transmitter Site

After camping in Cutler for the night, I have two options for June 7th, 2020.

Option A

Drive over to Great Wass Island Preserve which was acquired by the Nature Conservancy in 1978. The currents of the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy meet here leading to a large variety of flora and fauna.

Wass also qualifies as an US Island on the Air (ME004S).

Option B:

Complete a Lighthouses on the Air activation.

West Quoddy Head Lighthouse is the easternmost lighthouse in the United States.

According to Wikipedia: For a few weeks around the equinoxes, West Quoddy Head is the first location in the United States to see the sunrise. Quoddy Head State Park is also the closest geographic point in the United States to the African continent.

West Quoddy Head Lighthouse qualifies as part of the Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society (Designator: USA 880)

Want to follow my path in real time?

You have two options:

My website map

SpotWalla

Cool Ham Stuff