A Visit to HRO and a Quick SOTA Activation (Last Catch-Up Post)

On Saturday, November 5, I paid a visit to Ham Radio Outlet (HRO) in Oakland, California, with a small shopping list in hand. I had two goals in mind: (1) getting my new end-fed HF antenna up and operational, and (2) setting up my Yaesu FT-857D for portable (SOTA) operations.

A couple hundred dollars later, I headed southeast to nearby San Leandro to W6/NC-432 (Chabot 2 Benchmark) for a quick and easy SOTA activation. I thought I had shot some photos, but apparently not since I can't find them on my iPhone. There was a great view of San Francisco Bay and the cities of the East Bay.

The highlight of this otherwise uneventful activation was that I actually got a couple of bites on 6 meters (50 MHz band).

K6EL, KK6ZLY, and K6JEL are all fellow SOTA junkies.