Tag: SSB

Activation Report: W7O/CE-208 – Pine Ridge, OR | October 2023

I have a goal of activating all the summits in the Crooked River National Grassland before the end of 2023. The journey started back in January with Juniper Butte [W7O/CE-223] on the Western edge of the Grassland. In March, Tim-N7KOM and I hit Gray Butte [W7O/CE-180] and Sister’s View [W7O/CE-303] on a blustery spring day where we saw sun, rain, sleet/hail, snow and more sun. Then in July, I decided to get out and tackle the no-name, W7O/CE-300, a rarely activated gem to the SE of Gray Butte. With that one done, I had only to tag on Haystack Butte [W7O/CE-221] and Pine Ridge. Haystack Butte will be the last after today’s successful outing with N7OLE to knock out Pine Ridge.

The only report on Pine Ridge I found was on the PNW Sota Website from K7ATN from a few years ago. His approach looked to come in from the N/NW and I found what seemed like a shallower hike from the East, assuming we were able to drive our truck on a double track road as it appeared on the maps.

Turning West off of Lone Pine Rd onto Forest Rd 57, we drove approximately 0.6 mile and turned left onto FS 5700-100. We headed South for another approximately 0.7 mile until we reached a small draw, with a cow pen where the road turned down hill to the east. We found a place to park the truck off the road and began the climb up a double track trail on foot. We had to open and close the barbed wire, cow fence gate and wade through 20-30 Herefords who didn’t want anything to do with us. The 2 track isn’t terribly rough, and I am sure a passenger car with all wheel drive could easily make it up, the only difficulty would be the steepness. Certainly a high clearance 4×4 would make easy work of the trail. The road was actually quite smooth for a high desert double track.

About half way up we did get a surprising glimpse of a rattlesnake crossing the road. It had probably been lying there in the sun until we rudely interrupted its nap. We commented that we were glad we left the doggo pack at home for this one, they would certainly have made a ruckus about the snake.

After about 0.8 mile we sighted a clear path to the ridge and headed off track, up to join the ridge line. The going was fairly easy, even though the terrain steepens here, the ground was solid from our recent rain storms and there isn’t much vegetation to stumble over.

We climbed another 0.5-0.6 miles to the ridge then made our way to the true high point of the ridge. Sota Goat showed us within the AZ as soon as we crested the ridge but I was determined to stand on the highest point. The wind was blowing from the North so after the high point photo op we found a nice wind protected knoll from which to operate.

N7OLE but together her 2M Arrow Yagi while I setup for 40M HF with the IC-705 and K6ARK Linked EFHW. We made 2 quick 2M contacts with a couple of guys who were packing up from doing a POTA activation of the Grasslands just below us, then I put in the earphones and began calling CQ on CW. We were both able to activate and get the 2 points within a relatively short period, though I spend some more time on both 40M CW/SSB and 20M CW/SSB. After about 50 minutes of operating we packed up and headed back down to the truck and back into Redmond for some food and a beverage at Wild Ride Brewing.

Pine Ridge is an easy to moderate hike along a double track and easy bush wacking. Any passenger car should be able to navigate to the place we parked and many would likely have no trouble driving further up the 2 track if desired. We had plenty of activity on 2M and I wouldn’t expect any trouble activating 2M only. The views of the Grasslands and Central Oregon Cascades are fantastic and the solitude is remarkable for the ease of access.

Activation Report: W7O/CM-007 – Ball Butte, OR | September 2023

Ball Butte is a volcanic mountain of the Cascades in Deschutes County, Oregon, United States.[1] Its summit has an elevation of 8,091 feet and is located southeast of Broken Top1

KK7HJL, N7KOM, Lance the dog and XYL DF joined me on this outing to Ball Butte on a fine September morning. There is no established trail to the butte but it is relatively easy to navigate the SE Ridge to the top. Unfortunately, the previous activation reports and published tracks take to you a false summit, that is not in the AZ. We looked for a route along the summit ridge but found we we were blocked by 2 gendarmes that looked impassable. We had to descend back down the ridge we had come up and find another route to the true summit.

Orange: Planned, Blue: Actual

We ended up in the bowl of the butte, crossing over what looked like rubble from an ancient land slide that created the bowl to a chute that appeared to have an ascension path. The surface was very loose lava rock for the first 20 yards, then became just loose rock and sand but was bordered by some larger solid rock that made the ascent doable, if not easy.

The chute crests out in the AZ with the summit block just to the South. The summit block is small but easy to climb up. There is a very nice large meadow on top with plenty of room for 3-4 activators to spread out and not interfere with one another.

We setup the Arrow 3 Element Yagi and began calling CQ. We made several S2S and other 2M contacts relatively quickly so I decided to get up on HF and work some SSB, which I do much less often. I was able to pickup several S2S on 40M SSB then switched to CW. CW was surprising less productive, but I was still able to pick up a handful on 40 and a few more on 20.

XYL DF was staring to get noticeably restless, as was Lance to dog and my CW copy was deteriorating so I called QRT. I had my earphones in and hadn’t noticed that 2 other hikers had arrived and so I said hello but they weren’t very interested in engaging. I hollered at N7KOM to see how he was doing, he had already torn down his antenna and was back on 2M. KK7HJL was putting her 10M rig in her pack so I quickly disassembled my station and ate a sandwich prior to the descent.

We descended the same chute we had come up. We had to be pretty careful because the surface was pretty unstable in the middle section but we all safely made it to the bottom, Lance the dog leading the way.

The hike back to the truck was very nice. We took a slightly more direct path than we had on the ascent and were able to “scree ski” down a slope of cinder. I was really glad I had decided to pick up a new pair of hiking gators the evening before, they kept the cinder and dust out of my shoes.

Back at the truck we were greeted by a friendly forest service employee checking wilderness permits, which we had in my pack. There was another guy taking a survey of users of the forest so XYL DF served as our Communication Agent and took the survey.

The drive out was uneventful, other than having to back up to allow a couple of other vehicles through.

FS-370/380 are both unmaintained roads and high clearance/4WD vehicles are highly recommended. FS-370 from Todd Lake to the intersection with FS-380 is passable in a less capable vehicle but FS-380 is very rough. I have driven both in the past in a front wheel drive Honda Element and we did see several passenger cars in the parking area but you have been fairly warned. There is not an established trail and the approach involves some steep and loose cinder slopes. I would classify this as an intermediate to advanced hike, requiring good fitness and route finding skills. Ball Butte has fantastic 360 degree views of Broken Top, Tam McCarthur rim, Paulina Peak, Bend and eastward, Mt Bachelor, Tumalo and South Sister. A Central Cascade Wilderness Permit and NW Forest Pass are required for this hike. The Wilderness permits are available from Recreation.gov for $1 per person.

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Butte#:~:text=Ball%20Butte%20is%20a%20volcanic%20mountain%20of,Sno%2DPark%20or%20the%20Upper%20Three%20Creeks%20Sno%2DPark. ↩︎

Activation Report: W7O/CM-033 [Black Butte, OR] | July 2023

Black Butte is an extinct stratovolcano in the U.S. state of Oregon. Located in Jefferson County, it is part of Deschutes National Forest. Black Butte forms part of the Cascade volcanic arc. The butte lies just south of the Metolius Springs, which merge to form the headwaters of the Metolius River. The Metolius River’s basin sustains a wide array of plant life, large and small mammals, and more than 80 bird species.*

It became an icon of the area after the Deschutes Brewery named one of their flagship beers after the prominence. Black Butte Porter is a delicious English style dark porter developed by Gary Fish back in 1988 as one of the first beers produced by Deschutes and is still the nations #1 selling Porter.

Black Butte also happens to be one of the 8 Central Oregon buttes that are part of the annual Big Butte Challenge put on by the Cascade Relays organization. This is the second year Randi, KK7HJL, and myself have participated. It turns out that four of the buttes are also SOTA Summits so we get to kill 2 birds with one stone. For each summit one completes, a beer token is awarded for the sponsoring local brewery, a nice incentive to stop by for a beverage and some after hike food.

I got a late start this year on the challenge, but still have plenty of time to complete the remaining 7 summits. Last year KK7HJL and I did Black Butte for field day. It was during that activation that she decided she needed to get licensed so she could have some fun on the air instead of standing around waiting for me. This year we recruited Tim N7KOM and XYL Devan to do the challenge along with us.

The Black Butte trailhead is notoriously busy during the summer tourism months. We saw dozens of people on the hike up. The hike is a moderate challenge, the biggest concern in July is heat and hydration. We got a bit of a later start but it was still very pleasant when we reached the summit at 11:15AM after a 60 minute walk up the 2.1 mile hike from the parking area. The first mile is in the trees and shaded but be prepared for full exposure once the trail traverses into and old burn area for the remainder of the walk. There are a few patches of shade but not many.

Tim -N7KOM’s K6ARK End Fed Random Wire deployment.

Once on top, N7KOM found a nice shady spot to setup the Elecraft KX2 and EFRW. I having several times in the past couple of months carried my IC-705 and not used it, was determined to setup my on station. I brought along the Chameleon MPAS lite 17″ vertical. I bought the Chameleon Delta Loop last year during the Black Friday sales and have used it in the field for POTA activations a couple of times. The delta loop kit includes all of the same parts that the MPAS lite kit comes in addition to the extras required to make the delta loop, so I decided to try it out in the field.

The week prior I was testing the SWR with various counter poise lengths. I was able to achieve sub 1.2 SWR on all of the higher bands, 10-20M but had some trouble with 40M. During my testing I was able to get it down to around 1.5 but couldn’t achieve the same results on 40 in the field. SWR was pegging the meter on the IC-705 even with a full 33+ feet of counterpoise. After my 3rd attempt at manual tuning (extending/retracting the counterpoise) I decided to just try making an S2S contact with and activator in Idaho. It took a lot of work and he ended up giving me a 229, which made sense since it was pegging over 3.0 SWR.

Regardless of my bad luck on 40, I was able to pickup F4WBN on 10W 17M SSB, which was a surprise. Christian is notorious for giving everyone a 599 on CW, so I was happy to get a 559 on SSB. I picked up another, K6HPX from AZ but then SSB dried up and I switched to CW. There was a lot of action right away, and I picked up another 5 on 17M CW but struggled with the last call for too long and my chasers lost interest. WB6BHN turned out to be a difficult one for me to copy. After a few minutes of calling CQ, I switched over to 14M SSB. That turned out to be a bust so I went on to CW. I had only a bit more luck there, with all of 1 CW S2S… rough day.

It was just about then I got a text message from Tim that Devan was ready to go, turns out that I missed the text because I was already tearing down. The sun was getting high and the wind picking up and I was getting hungry. We ran down the trail to the shade because Lance’s (the sota dog) paws were getting burned by the decomposed lava. Once in the shade we slowed to a walk but were back at the car in short order.

Lance surveying Mt. Jefferson

Black Butte is a moderate hike, with phenomenal views of the Central Oregon Cascade range. There is an active fire tower that should be avoided, as the public is not allowed near the tower during fire season. The hike is a 2.1 mile, steady pitch that ascends 1600ft from the parking area. Getting to the trailhead can be done in any passenger car, though the last mile is a bit rough due to a lot of runoff from the heavy snows this past winter. From US Highway 20 turn South on FS-11, then take a left on FS-1110 to the parking area. The route is signed well but the lower section of FS-1110 is gravel and very water boarded so take it easy and plan extra time. Bring extra water, sunscreen and a layer in case the winds pickup or a mountain thunderstorm develops spontaneously. 2M can work if you are patient but its not a bad idea to bring an HF capable radio as well as Central Oregon can be a quiet zone at times.

  1. Wikipedia ↩︎