Hilltopping on Fremont Peak 2-27-05

Fremont Peak (elevation 3169') is located in Fremont Peak State Park. Click here for an aerial image showing the location of Fremont Peak relative to the Monterey Bay. Click here to see the location on a topographic map. Nice directions to the park are available here on the San Jose Astronomical Association web page.

Here's the view of Fremont Peak (right) and the neighboring hill with the radio towers (left) from the parking lot where we parked. I took this picture after we hiked back down from the peak. There is a parking lot even closer to the peak (through the white gate), but it was closed when we arrived. The peak is really not that far away from the trail head, but the trail loops around the back side of the peak before climbing with a few switchbacks. [Click on image for a larger version]

This picture shows how I mounted the telescoping fiberglass mast on Fremont Peak. I picked up the tripod mount from Radio Shack earlier that morning. A couple of rubber straps are holding the mast in place inside the tripod mount.

I borrowed some metal tent stakes from the camping gear and hammered them into the soil between the rocks. I couldn't drive the stakes all the way in because of the rocky ground, so the wind was able to lift one leg of the tripod off the ground an inch or so. I thought the mast and antenna was going to blow over at one point. My wife was wondering if I would let go of the radio if a strong gust actually sent the antenna sailing.

Here's another view of the antenna setup. As you can tell from the clouds in the background, this probably wasn't the best day to try hilltopping on Fremont Peak.

Here's the portable 4 element 2m Yagi in the vertical configuration. I first tried to make contact on 146.520 MHz simplex using my Vertex Standard VX-150. The RF was so thick up there, I had to resort to using my Icom IC-R2 scanner with a 3 inch rubber duckie antenna to listen for responses to my calls.

This was similar to my first experiences on Coyote Peak with my Yaesu VX-2R dual-band HT. That was the main reason I bought the single-band VX-150 -- the receiver specs were much better. The VX-150 was able to deal with the RF soup on Coyote Peak, but no such luck on Fremont Peak. The VX-150 front-end was overwhelmed by the nearby transmitters when connected to the beam. It did a little better with the stock duckie, but I was only able to hear one station in San Jose. I was also able to hear a ham in Monterey who cranked up his power for me.

After the bad experience with FM simplex, I decided to try 2m sideband. The FT-817 worked great on 144.200 USB. I was able to hear Ken (W6KLH) in San Jose just fine, as well as a Monterey station (WE6R). Since it did so well on sideband, I thought I would try the FT-817 on 146.520 FM to see if maybe it would work better than the VX-150. BZZZZT..Wrong! The FT-817 failed miserably to do anything but show a full-scale signal with a noisy mess coming out of the speaker.

Fremont Peak is a very rough RF environment for hilltopping without some kind of filter. The views are nice though! You can see the Monterey Bay behind me in this picture [Click on image for a larger version]. Moss Landing is just a little to the right of the mast.

By the way, the black colored rod sticking out of the tripod mount next to the red mast is a 20m Hamstick. At one point I mounted it on top of the mast and tried calling CQ on the 20m HFpack frequency of 14342.50 kHz, but the noise level was S7 so I gave up trying to hear a reply from a QRP station.

This picture gives you a good idea of the close proximity of the radio towers. This picture was taken with the camera pointed to the Southeast.

The weather held up until I was about ready to pack up anyway. Then it started to sprinkle very lightly. By the time we got back to the parking lot, it was sprinkling more, and then it was raining by the time we started heading back home.

Since it was right off of 156 on the way back home, we decided to stop at Mission San Juan Bautista and look around.

Doesn't quite look like the same road that runs up the SF Peninsula. :)

I took this picture out the front windshield on the way back to Highway 156 from downtown San Juan Bautista. Fremont Peak can be seen in the distance.