Rolling Rock Trail Campout - Oct 20,
2000
Rolling Rock Trail
Nr Bailey, CO
After my last hike to the top of Mt Bierstadt, I got an email from Dan, N0BN.
He said that he had tried to contact me when I was on top of Bierstadt
but I never returned his call. We exchanged a few emails, turned out
he is an avid hiker/backpacker and we arranged a short
overnite trip
to get to know each other. Dan selected the site. A short hike
(about 3 miles) on the Rolling Rock Trail into the Lost Creek Wilderness.
Dan was familiar with a good camping spot on the trail and he gave
me explicit directions (3 miles in, cross a total of 4 streams, first 3 steams
have nice split log bridges, 4th stream has a simpler bridge, campsite is
on a little knoll about 30 ft to the left of the trail about 1 minute past
the 4th bridge) and we arranged to meet there. We both expected to
do some HF QRP operating and Dan also was going to be control operator for
a 2 meter net from the campsite on Sunday morning.
I was the first one to the site. As soon as I arrived I sat down for
a short constitutional to enjoy
the scenery.
As I sat there I thought... Had I brought along the short coax jumper
that I needed to hook my antenna tuner to the rig? I rifled through
equipment and discovered it wasn't there. This was a bad problem as
my dipole had a 300 ohm feedline and I couldn't hook it directly to the rig.
It looked like I might be going without any radio tonite until........
I remembered an email I had seen on QRPL talking about the worlds simplest
antennas.
One
of the simplest was a simple quarter wave wire attached directly to the feedline.
I started cutting up my dipole and came up with two 16'6" wires (qtr
wave on 20 meters). I threw the end of one up in a tree so that the
end hung just above ground and then pushed the end into the center of the
bnc connecter (by crimping the wire just a little I was able to get it to
stay in the hole). The other wire I attached to a screw on the rig
(for a counter poise). I fired up the rig
and miraculousley,
I was able to make some qsos. I cut two 23' wires and rigged up the
same setup for a little 30 meter rig (see the photo with the yellow wires
hanging out of the rigs). I got the two rigs setup on a rock and managed
several successful qsos on 20. In the meantime, Dan arrived, and hammered
out several qsos on 40 meter with his 12' high dipole. That evening,
I pulled the radios into the tent and has a few very nice qsos on 30 also.
One of these was a 3 way qso between me
(colorado),
missouri and michigan. All in all a very successful qrp outing.
First order of business the next morning was a photo of 'The Castle' just
across the valley. After breakfast, Dan got
started
with his 2 meter net (from his sleeping bag as you can see from the pic)
as I packed up my gear. The morning was pretty cloudy and cool and
looked like rain. I was completely packed with Dan still in the middle
of his net so I hit the trail just as a light rain began. As I hiked
the rain turned to snow but the short hike back was pleasant. I took
the time for a quick photo of some Colorado aspens just losing their leaves
to the fall weather.
