Today, I visited Elk Knob State Park in NW North Carolina ..... near Todd, NC. We started up the Elk Knob Summit Trail around 10:15 EST and made it to the top in about 50 minutes. This is a new state park ... so the entire trail is not complete all the way to the summit. The last 1/4 mile is up a old logging road . The grade is really steep with lots of loose rocks ... the rest of the trail is quite nice. The day was great for hiking with the temps in the low 70's.... when we finally made the summit ... just after 11:00AM ...we were the only hikers on the summit . So the antenna set-up went fairly quick...I operated for about 1.5 hrs and put 15 contacts in the log. 4 of those contacts were into Europe. The bugs were terrible on the summit ... finally after 1.5 hours I couldn't take any more ...So I packed up my equipment and headed down the mountain ... My equipment was as follows ... Yaesu FT-857D @ 100watts .... A123 battery pack ... Antenna was a Mini-Buddipole ... set up as a Versatee Vertical w/ shock cord mast using 2 elevated radials.
Here is my log ....
1. IZ6FXP ... Italy
2. OT4A ... Belgium
3. 9A7V... Croatia
4. SM6CWK ... Sweden
5. W7EPA ... AZ
6. KJ4TAC ... NC
7. KG4RZW ... NC
8. K7MUL ... TX
9. N4ILK / Mobile ... NC
10. N7KRE ... WA
11. K6STS ... CA
12. KG7UFO / Mobile ... CO ( FT-817 @ 2.5 watts )
13. KB0SFP ... MO
14. KC4WDM ... TN
A special thanks to my good friend / Sherpa Guide .... Tim Akins who is NOT a HAM ... but waited patiently while I played radio for almost 2 hours !!
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