[Elecraft] Catalina island with KX2: spoiled by super-low noise floor

[Chip Stratton]

Same thing on many (not all!) of those SOTA peaks. I keep giving 599's to
stations that I know would only be 339's to me at home.

Chip
AE5KA

On Sun, Jul 29, 2018 at 11:25 AM Christopher Hoover <ch at murgatroid.com>
wrote:

> I did much the same with my KX2 on Santa Cruz Island (part of Channel
> Islands, 20 miles off the coast of Ventura) two weeks ago.   Definitely
> recommended.
>
> 73 de AI6KG
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 10:21 AM, Wayne Burdick <n6kr at elecraft.com> wrote:
>
> > Last week my family and I went to Avalon, Catalina Island, off the coast
> > of southern California. What an awesome place! It feels like a coastal
> > tourist paradise in another country, except that it’s just 26 miles from
> > Long Beach. Definitely a bucket-list item.
> >
> > To recover from two days of gawking at beach scenery and tapping generous
> > libations, I set off on a 6 mile solo hike to take in the view from 1500
> > feet. And to sneak in a little stealth radio op.
> >
> > From downtown Avalon I walked to the Wrigley Memorial, then zig-zagged up
> > the Garden to Sky trail for 1.2 miles, where I was rewarded with a vista
> to
> > the north that includes another of the Channel Islands. At this point I
> > picked up the jeep road for another half mile, heading east, ascending
> even
> > further to a gazebo overlooking the Hermit Gulch campground far below.
> (The
> > trail down from here is very steep; if I ever do it again, I’ll go the
> > opposite direction.)
> >
> > This gazebo was the perfect spot to break the KX2 out of its tiny ES40
> bag
> > and deploy the whip, which took all of 30 seconds.
> >
> > Aside from the obvious (gorgeous WX, killer view, and the joy of running
> > 10 watts hand-held to an AX1 whip on 15/17/20), I was blessed with both
> > acoustic and RF noise floors so low that I was reminded of a minor
> tinnitus
> > condition. No wind, no other humans, the occasional cry of a hawk, and
> the
> > radio equivalent of a peaceful, easy feeling. I could hear stations that
> > were merely thinking about transmitting.
> >
> > It would be tempting to weave a tall tale about DX worked from this
> > idyllic overlook. Truth is I just listened for awhile, marveling at how
> > sparkling clean everything sounded without the usual three coats of RF
> > grunge we often suffer at home. The noise drops with any trip away from
> > civilization, of course, but this was exceptional.
> >
> > It’s yet another reason to get out of the shack. And why we keep
> designing
> > rigs like the KX2.
> >
> > 73,
> > Wayne
> > N6KR
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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