A small group of local ham friends that meet on our discord server decided to get out for a SOTA Sunday 8/3/2025. I was joined by Edward KO6DVZ, Mark K3MGM, and A.J. W6CMY.

The hike was a bit shorter than anticipated, we miscalculated our planned 1.5mile hike to be 1.5 miles round trip. With only 800 or so feet elevation, this was an easy walk to the summit.

Having come off a successful CW activation the day Prior on Cahuenga Peak, I decided to go for it again. The IC-705 was great on 2m CW. Once that seemed to fizzle out I moved to the Elecraft Kx2 to work HF bands. This is one area where I’m not impressed with the ICOM 705… I don’t like having an external tuner that requires additional cables / hookup. I’m a bit spoiled with my Elecraft radio. Edward packed and operated his quad band mobile rig… and AJ had his BITX QRP rig that he used to work HF CW. He was using a random wire end fed which inspired me to break mine out that same day. I’ve been in love with my EFHW antenna for SOTA recently… but having a 66 foot wire to deal with for 40m is a lot to handle. The shorter 30 ft wire for the random wire is a lot easier to manage.