All,
I'm up in in the KLF SOTA area for the second time this summer, working as a geologist at a gold mine outside of town. Saturday (8/12/17), I had the opportunity to do a 21 mile day hike and did 2 SOTA summits using 2m FM with the help of Dale, KL7R. The first was KLF/FN-072 called "4070" after the elevation of the summit. It is along a 28.5 mile loop hike west of the Chena Hot Springs Road about an hour outside of Fairbanks. I'd previously (in June 2017) hiked to summit "3750" about 4.5 miles from the upper trailhead along this loop and had looked longingly over at the higher summits. On this August trip, the weather was not very nice with light to moderate rain in the morning and about 300 feet of visability in fog. I have no photos of the 4070 summit as there was nothing but fog to look at!
Dale (KL7R) was extremely helpful in helping me activate KLF/FN-072 on the way to the highest point for miles around at Chena Dome (KLF/FN-059; ~4423 feet MSL). Here, an Alaska State Patrol communications hut exists as well as a Diamond X50A antenna from a former 2m repeater. Since the site is nearly 2,000 feet above treeline, it is no surprise that strong winds and extreme conditions probably did in the antenna mast and now off-the-air repeater.
I took advantage of the commincations equipment to improvise a 40m and 20m wire dipole setup. Dale (KL7R) spotted me on 40m LSB. Unfortunately, no stations were heard on 40m due to very poor HF conditions, typcial of central AK. However, I heard multiple continents of stations on 20m and after much effort, had KI6DL, Dennis in northern ID reply to my calls on 20m SSB. It was a struggle, but I believe we made the first HF SOTA contact from the state of AK. Looks like these were also the first two 6-point SOTA activations in Alaska. Two days later, I can assure all readers, those are some hard-earned points as my legs are still sore from 21 miles of hiking with over 5000 feet of climbing up and down.
