Annual Labor Day White Mountain Trip

08/28/03 TO 09/01/03

 

Every Labor Day Weekend for the past 3 years we've made plans to go camping on White Mountain at the Cedar Flats camp grounds. This year was no different. This was my 4th time to camp at this spot. The camp sites are located near Big Pine, CA (also about 20 minutes South of Bishop, CA) off of the 168 highway at about 7000' above sea level. Cedar Flats contains a few VERY large group camp sites that can house 5 to 50 individuals. On all of the trips that I've been involved with here, I've yet to see any other groups of campers. Just the way I like it ;-)

The Cedar Flats camp grounds are semi-improved, meaning that there are out houses. But, there is no running water, so bring plenty of it. The trail to the campsite is a dirt road that varies in condition. You could easily get stuck if in a car in bad weather.  A 4x4 is more appropriate. The weather was quite hot this time during the day (hotter than it's been since I've been going) and only cool at night. I stayed in shorts for most of the time. We did have 1 day with a bit of rain, but nothing really worth mentioning. Was actually a nice change from the heat! You won't find any mosquitoes here, it's way too dry. Bring plenty of sun block as there isn't a lot of natural shade. 

Elena and I drove up Thursday morning in my new Toyota Tacoma 4x4 and arrived around 3PM (about a 5 hour drive from Burbank) after making a stop in Bishop for supplies and lunch. One place we always stop at is the Erick Schat's Bakery for sheepherder bread and macaroons! We set up our tent in the same spot that we have for the past couple of years. Shortly after that I was looking for a spot to set up the QRP station.

This year I brought the Elecraft K1. I was going to bring a couple of other rigs as well, but didn't want to have to bring an antenna tuner. I guess having an internal tuner has spoiled me ;-) After a conversation with George W5YR I made a new antenna to try out. I built an Extended Double Zepp for 20 Meters. This consists of 88' of Teflon insulated #22 silver tinned stranded copper (ala Apex Surplus) center fed with roughly 40' of Radio Shack TV Twin Lead. I also made a 1:1 W2DU style current balun out of a short length (about 9") of RG-58 and about 30 ferrite beads made of #73 material (Amidon FB-73-2401). I covered the beads with black heat shrink tubing and terminated each end with a BNC crimp type connector. I was able to get the antenna up to a flat top height of about 30' between a couple of trees. The K1's internal ATU had no problem getting a good match on all bands (40/30/20/15 Meters). Best DX on this trip was WA9YDJ/P (Backyard Portable) near Chicago, IL. The bands were quite noisy this trip with lots of static crashes from all the storms over N. America. I also checked into the Western States QRP Net Saturday Morning on 7.040 at 9AM Pacific Time. Net control was Tom W6JHQ. Signals were very good on Saturday morning and I had good copy on all of the checked in stations. Had several very good rag chews and overall the new antenna worked quite well. I'm going to try it on our next outing providing that I have trees to hang it.

Here is a copy of my log:

 08/29/03:

08/30/03:

08/31/03:

That's the log as I have it... Now to the pictures:

Here's a shot of the new truck. It did FB getting us to the camp site. Our REI dome tent is to the right...

 

Heres a wide shot of the station getting some shade under a tree...

 

Here's a shot of the feedpoint of the 88' EDZ...

 

Here's another shot of the antenna against a cloudy sky...

 

Here are a few of the other campers at the main camp site...

 

Lil Kevin says "Can I play radio too? I can do 20 WPM CW" ;-)

 

"Man, first they make me carry all the radio gear and now they expect me to cook dinner too!" ;-)

 

One afternoon Hugh and I built these light weight backpacking alcohol stoves from plans that he found on the web at: Scott Henderson's Pepsi-G Stove . The one on the far left is mine and Hugh built the others. The large one is a new idea that Hugh had...

 

Here's a picture of my stove burning Denatured Alcohol. They work quite well!

 

Here's a shot of Hugh's stoves at work. The new design is the one on the right...

 

Here are a few shots of the terrain that I took from atop a hill near our camp site:

 

That's about it for this trip folks. Was a nice time and was great to get out of Burbank for a while and out into the wilderness. Stay tuned for more TTF Adventures...

 

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