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Antoine Peak - Easy 4 pts From Spokane

AE5KA's picture
Summit: 
W7W/WE-027
Voice Cellular Coverage: 
Decent, workable
Data Cellular Coverage: 
Decent, workable
Cellular Provider: 
Verizon
APRS Coverage: 
Don't know

I was in Spokane with my wife, who was presenting some research at a conference (I'm retired, she's the "breadwinner" now) and had some time to kill. I brought my KX2 along, with a QRPGuys 40m-10m UnUnTenna. This is a fairly simple antenna, with wire mated to a 9:1 unun, and takes a bnc coax jumper from the KX2. After a hike up from the parking area, I found a good place to set up, and threw a messenger line up into a tree. It was then that I realized I had not remembered to bring the coax jumper. This really deflated me. All that effort, and there was to be no activation. I packed everything up and started down. As I walked, I thought, and realized I could probably cobble together an antenna after all. I turned around and headed back up. I removed the counterpoise wire from the unun, and attached it to a case screw on the KX2. I removed the antenna wire, and found I could slip it into the KX2 BNC center without danger of damaging it. I tried to tune up on 20 meters, but the wire was almost exactly half wave, and without the unun even the KX2's outstanding ATU could not handle the high impedance. Down to 30 meters and the ATU gave me 1:1.2, good to go. I quickly made 5 CW QSOs, but the cold was turning my fingers into inflexible twigs and I decided that was enough and I broke it all down and packed it in.

The trailhead is only about 25 minutes from downtown Spokane, and it has a large dedicated parking area you can see on Google Maps at https://goo.gl/maps/Gv8aVFTLUY92 If you use www.what3words.com (check it out, its a cool concept) to define locations, it is at segregation.magnitude.weeds 

The hike itself is not difficult, and is largely a dirt road to the antenna complex at the top - about 1.7 miles and 800 vertical feet one way (the Antoine Summit Trail). I hiked past the 3rd tower to a collection of rocks ( at swigs.showing.doghouse ) which made an erstwhile desk upon which to place the radio and logbook on while sitting in a fairly comfortable position, with adjacent trees to throw a wire into. I did not notice much in the way of QRN on either 20 or 30 meters.