Mt. Whitney Hiking 2018 (6) ~ Coverage of Amateur radio

From the summit

Brought an amateur radio .....

Since I got amateur radio license in January this year, I brought a radio to the hiking.   I did not have much chance to use it, but this is a report what the coverage looks like.

Coverage on the road

On the way to the trail head / Visitor center, I enabled APRS when I was driving a car.   I saw many packets when I was in Yosemite.  However once passed Yosemite and got into US-395 where the east side of Sierra Nevada mountains.  I guess it is due to very early in the morning.  (I did not use it on the way back since dead battery).

There is digipeter in Bishop and the station picked my packets on the way.

On the trail?

The trail goes along a creek and it did not seem to be very good coverage on the east side before Trail Crest.   Unfortunately, I did care about battery capacity, I did not turn it on all the way.  I only turned on when I took a rest for a few minutes.  So I am not really sure, but it did not seem that it did not work well, there were no incoming packets and my packets were not picked up any stations / digipeters.   At Trail Camp, I used more time in the tent, however, I heard nothing and no packets were picked up.  I use the standard hand held with 1 W output power.

I saw a few people carried amateur radio, however they used it for a communication within their group.  I listened some simplex frequencies, but I did not heard anything.

Once passed Trail Crest on the main ridge to the summit, it seemed that some of digipeters on the west side can be reached and there was a better coverage on the ridge.

Again, I did not turn it on all the way, so that I am not sure if it is true or not.  But we might not expect much coverage of APRS except the main ridge between Trail Crest and the summit.  I did not check frequencies of local repeaters before the hiking, therefore, I have no idea what the local repeater coverage looks like.   Simplex channels were very quiet and I did not hear any communication at all during the hiking.  It is better to check local repeaters next time.

Emergency usage?

I am considering Amateur radio for a communication method in emergency.  It does not seem to be very good since APRS coverage was not as good as I was expected.  Therefore it might be very limited to use in emergency.  However, it is better to understand local repeater coverage.  I guess it might be useful if I can put some local repeater channels into my radio.  So next time, I will plan this research with some local repeater channels.

(To be continue ...)