The Appalachian Trail Golden Packet is an event where stations from Georgia to Maine setup ARPS on mountain tops in order to pass data packets up and down the length of the Appalachian Trail. My club helps activate the station on top of Comer's Rock. Here's how it went this year!
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| David Todd (N4SH) Operating |
This year I accompanied David Todd (N4SH) and Chris Ecker (KY4QE) to the top of Comers Rock in order to setup for the ATGP. The mountaintop is fairly easy to get to, as the only hiking necessary to reach the summit is to walk up a long set of stone steps to access the old fire lookout on top.
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| Stay Gold'n |
We got there about an hour prior to the event start and weather was quite nice. It was mostly sunny and hot to start off with. Someone had setup a flag in the south-west corner of the fire lookout and, while I don't condone vandalism, I was amused to see someone had spray painted "Stay Gold'n" on the concrete pad.
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| David's (N4SH) TM-710 setup for ATGP |
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| Josh's (KM4AZW) Dualband Setup for Voice Operation |
I setup my Anytone Dualband with my portable Jpole antenna in the north-west corner in order to operate on the voice coordination frequency.
While packets were not able to be sent the full length of the trail. Our station was working well, and that's a success in my book.
While the weather started off nice, the clouds quickly rolled in followed by rain and thunder. We wound up packing everything up and heading off the mountain about an hour earlier than the official end time for the event.
Looking forward to trying again next year!
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