W2/WE-096 - West Italy Hill
I decided to skip the black Friday sales on 11/26 and instead head out to get some SOTA points with an activation on W2/WE-096 - West Italy Hill .
Although it’s still technically autumn, the winter weather has arrived in western New York. I decided to use this activation to test my winter loadout and see what might need to be added or improved for winter activations.
West Italy Hill is a 1 point summit that rests south of Canandaigua lake. In-between Naples and Italy, NY.
This summit can be accessed via hike or you can drive up on a seasonally maintained road. The route for the hike from the valley actually puts you on to the seasonally maintained road for the last portion of the hike. Since I would have had to hike the road anyway and the trail head in the valley was marked as “closed” due to hunting season, I decided to opt for the drive up approach with a short walk.
Most of the road on the summit was heavily posted. I parked in a safe spot and walked till I was able to find an unposted area along this abandoned portion of road, within the activation zone.
I put my new random wire antenna up in the air with my POTA explore mast. This was my first SOTA activation with this random wire antenna. However, I had already tested it out with some POTA activations, so I knew it would work well.
The antenna has a 9:1 unun with two 25ft pieces of wire. I like this set up because the shorter lengths of the random wire are easiest to set up on the more densely treed summits here in NY. This antenna tunes up great from 40m - 10m and the addition of the coax also gives me more flexibility on where I can sit.
I made 16 QSOs total w/ two S2S contacts.
40m - 8
20m - 7
17m - 1
S2S - KX0R - W0C/FR-066, K6CPR - W4A/HR-002
After about 30mins I decided to call it good and pack up. This was a great test for my winter set up and helped me figure what I might need to improve. Which was mainly better gloves.
With winter bonus points starting this weekend, I’m excited to get back out there.
I plan to activate in the Catskill the next two weekends and start stacking up bonus points.
Hope to catch you on the air.
