2022 Central Oregon Summit to Summit Party

S2S Ops at Worthy Brewing

It all started in July at the W7O SOTA Campout hosted by Amy AG7GP down at the beautiful Hyatt Lake Recreation Area in Southern Oregon. It was my first gathering of ham minded folks and I was looking forward to meeting and chatting with other operators, being a relatively new ham myself. I had done a handful of activations around Central Oregon with my wife and dogs and was excited to learn how others get things done. Additionally, my wife Randi, who had just that previous Wednesday taken and passed her Technician’s exam and was looking forward to making her first contacts, with her newly issued callsign (arriving literally hours before we go to camp).

Not long after we arrived, K7ATN came over to check us in and introduce himself, referring to me as “that new guy from Bend” and gave us a quick rundown of the “plan” for the weekend. We had a lot of fun that weekend. Saturday night as we chatted and drank some of Jeff’s, KJ7VDP, delicious home brew, ATN pitched the idea of a Central Oregon Summit to Summit party later in the summer. Tim, N7KOM, had plans to do a bigger summit and he  thought it would be nice to coordinate some operators to chase as the area can be difficult to work. I agreed to help as best I could.

Not very long after we arrived home from the campout weekend I received an email from ATN describing previous S2S parties hosted in the Willamette valley and I got excited about the prospect. We settled on a date and started sending out communications to the local hams and clubs to raise some awareness and try to gather a few more locals into the fray.

Interest started slowly but we ultimately gathered 14 operators on 10 Summits, with a last minute entry, bringing the total to 15 Operators on 11 Summits. Operators included, ⅔ of Oregon’s SOTA Mountain Goat population, a famous Mountain Climbing-YouTuber, 3 YL’s and 2 brand new to SOTA operators with 5 of the total from the Central Oregon Area.

Net Control Station on W70/CM-038

Since we had so many folks and to make the party move along at a reasonable pace, I acted as Net Control on 146.58. Starting at 1800 UTC, I took check in’s and gave my signal report to get myself out of the fray. Once we had everyone checked in, we went down the list, letting each subsequent operator make calls to summits that they could hear but had not yet talked to. The idea being that by the end, there shouldn’t be many other operators the last person on the list need contact. It was a little confusing for newer folks but in the end it worked great. After about 40 minutes, I shut down the net and we all descended our summits to meet up for some cold drinks and food at Worthy Brewing Company in Bend.

At lunch, Tim N7KOM and Bill N7WXW decided to summit S. Sister the next morning since they didn’t have time to do it for the Party. We coordinated enough folks to get them both S2S and S2 Rooftop contacts early on Sunday morning so as to get them back to their vehicles at a reasonable time.

Summit to Rooftop with N7KOM and K7WXW

Thanks to all the operators who participated: W6PZA, WJ7WJ, NW7CQ, W7SCY, NE7ET, KG7JQY, N7FOP, K7WXW, N7KOM, KJ7VDP, KK6CN and especially KK7HJL for supporting me in this strange and nerdy sport. A special thanks to K7ATN for planting the seed and helping coordinate.