https://video.70cm.net/videos/watch/ad8dc8c3-f3a4-4b35-88c3-3cd50b7b075c http://blog.benmook.com/w6-ss-423-butterbredt-peak/ Butterbredt Peak was my first stop on a trip to activate several summits around the northern edge of the Mojave Desert and the south edge of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I left Los Angeles for my trip late in the day which had me rushing to get up to the summit before 0:00 zulu. This also put me square in the hottest part of the day. The hike up Butterbredt started easy, but maybe a half mile in the path got steep and extremely sandy, to the point where I felt like I was on a sand treadmill, only making a few inches of progress for each step. Thankfully, this section was short and I was able to continue on. Along the way, fighter jets ripped through the sky along with the defining sound of their engines. I sat and watched them fly around for 10 minutes or so. The top was windy, which is expected on desert summits. I spotted via APRS and started calling CQ on 40M. Not too many takers. I moved to 30M and picked up one more contact, then moved to 20M. Picked up one more contact there. Just 4 contacts on 3 bands… Was my radio broken? Nope, there was a solar event which was blacking out HF. I hiked down the same way I came up, got into the truck and looked for a place to camp for the night. https://sotl.as/summits/W6/SS-423 Sun, 19 Jul 2026 16:31:21 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.70cm.net https://video.70cm.net/lazy-static/avatars/fa26bfa5-80d3-4a25-b884-607bfbc49a7b.png https://video.70cm.net/videos/watch/ad8dc8c3-f3a4-4b35-88c3-3cd50b7b075c All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.70cm.net/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.