N0B on Mt Humboldt: the HF QSOs

Amateur Radio operators from around Colorado climb many of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains to set up amateur radio stations in an effort to communicate with other radio amateurs across the state and around the world every second Sunday in August for the hamradio Colo-14er special event. This video is the second in this series about N0B's adventure up Mt Humboldt (14,065ft) with Guy/N7UN and Steve/wG0AT and their faithful sherpa goats Rooster and Peanut. It chronicles our HF QSOs while on the windy Mt Humboldt summit. Thanks to all for the fun contacts.

First Video of N0B on Humboldt Pk

Steve/wG0AT just published the VHF video of the N0B efforts on 14,064' Humboldt Peak for the Colo 14er event. Thanks to all for fun QSOs and sending Steve your photos! Hope you enjoy the show! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qJxok9YJKI

Extreme QRP on 14,100 Humboldt Peak!

What a great QRP adventure! And wG0AT and N7UN made it to the top of 14,100' Humboldt Peak, spent four hours operating as N0B on HF (CW and SSB) and 2m VHF for the Colorado 14ers special event ( http://www.14er.org/ ) in spite of the winds gusting to 40+ mph. Although we never made contact with Brian/N6IZ who was simultaneously climbing 14, 161' Mt. Shasta in northern California nor Mark/AF6AZ on 14,026' Mt. Langley in southern California, N0B had over 60 QSOs from the summit. Our best DX was Kurt/HB9AFI who gave us a solid 55n on 20m CW.

Our adventure began on Friday with a "challenging" 4WD drive into the Sangre de Christo Mountains trailhead for Humboldt, a basecamp move up to 11,700' on Saturday which included a "conditioning" climb to 13,000' for acclimatization. Early Sunday (5:00 am) we started our summit assault with Steve's loyal "sherpas" (pack goats), Rooster and Peanut, carrying our water, batteries, and radio gear. Recent rock slides above 13,000' made our last 1,000' very challenging as we were in places climbing "hand over hand" up refrigerator-sized granite bolders and helping our pack goats choose the safest routes. Fortunately we had a partially-built rock shelter at the top to shield us from the worst of the mountain-top winds and provide a launch-point for our QRP signals with QSOs throughout the US on 20m CW and SSB while Steve manned the VHF 2m station.

After nearly 5 hours at the summit, hypoxia and altitude sickness coerced us to retreat to more oxygen-rich elevations. What a trip and adventure! And before long, we were thinking about next year's 14er event: What QRP adventure are we going on next? Stayed tuned for more information and links to pictures and videos!

Steve had a "goat-cam" on Peanut to record the climb above 13,000' . See Peanut's view of the adventure! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1jDG0tBm90

ARRL Featured Article for 2008 Event

Click here for our 2008 Colo-14er event story published by the ARRL. A similar article was published by the QRP-ARCI organization for their Spring 2009 magazine.

News Release #2

In one week, the Old Goats DXpedition team (including Rooster and Peanut!) is off to participate in the Colo 14er "special event" hamradio (see http://www.14er.org/ ) activation of Humboldt Peak (14,064') this August 9th using our 2008 callsign of N0B. After setting a "first" for a QRP HF out-of-state, 14er-to-14er qso in 2008 (Mt. Whitney, CA to Uncompaghre, CO), this time we hope to make a 3-way, summit QSOs between Mt. Shasta, Mt. Langley (both in CA) and Humboldt Peak in CO. The Colorado team of Steve/wG0AT and Guy/N7UN will hike into a 11,000’ base camp on Friday and setup QRP antennas for Friday and Saturday radio fun.

Then at 4 am MDT on Sunday we will start the summit climb of Humboldt with a goal of an 8 am MDT summit activation using the special event callsign N0B. At the same time, Brian/N6IZ will climb Mt. Shasta (14,162') and Mark/AF6AX will be climbing Mt Langley (14,062'). Guy/N7UN will be carrying a portable APRS unit (see http://aprs.fi and use N7UN-9 for the SSID) for near realtime route tracking. Anybody that might be interested in participating even if its basecamp activities in support of the climbing teams, please contact Guy/N7UN. Look forward to working you from the summit!

News Release:

The Old Goats DXpedition team (including Rooster and Peanut!) is planning another Colo 14er "special event" activation of Humboldt Peak (14,064') this August 9th using our 2008 callsign of N0B. After setting a "first" for a QRP HF out-of-state, 14er-to-14er qso in 2008 (Mt. Whitney, CA to Uncompaghre, CO), this time we hope to make a 3-way, summit QSOs between Mt. Shasta, Mt. Langley (both in CA) and Humboldt Peak in CO. The Colorado team will hike into the 11,000’ base camp on Friday and setup QRP antennas for Friday and Saturday radio fun. Then at 4 am, Sunday, we will start the summit climb of Humboldt with a goal of an 8 am summit activation using special event callsign N0B. At the same time, Brian/N6IZ and Mark/AF6AX will be climbing Mt. Shasta and Mt Langley. Anybody that might be interested in participating even if its basecamp activities in support of the climbing teams, please contact Guy/N7UN.