Today Erin and I activated the first KH6/KU SOTA summit!  Nounou is a great little hike, and is much easier than the guide books led us to believe.  It had rained the night before, but the trail was in great condition.

Track file (google earth) can be found at:  Track KH6/KU-011

The hike is about 3.3 miles round-trip:

A view to the South towards Lihue, including 2 other SOTA summits.

Here’s the 12m antenna, constructed from Buddipole parts.  It is a full size 12m dipole, about 8′ above ground level.  Too low normally, but fine on this summit with sharp drop offs all around.  I started with 20m (2 contacts), then down to 17m and 15m with no luck.  12m was the best I’ve seen it from a summit, and I was able to work the mainland from West coast to East coast running 5W from my Elecraft KX3.

Here’s the SOTA log:

See the remaining photos at Mainelife.net