Just a couple of notes about Grizzly Mountain. First, dont try to google map the directions to the road (NW Grizzly Mountain Road). Ive been up there many times since I grew up over there but never tried google just to see what it said. Today I did. Im not sure where google was going, but Im sure it would have never actually gotten me to the correct turn off. Id still be wondering through the sage brush on the completely wrong side of the mountain. Coming from the west on Hwy 26, between Madras and Prineville, turn left (North) on NW Grizzly Mountain Road just past MP 16. There is a green road sign on the left. Just follow the road all the way to the AZ. No gates, just a little steep and rocky in some places. The condition of the upper part of this road can vary with maintenance and weather considerably, but generally speaking, you can make the trip in most vehicles. Just avoid the rocks.
RFI galore. There are a ton of communications sites on Grizzly.
VHF is very difficult. My last couple trips I tried using my FT60 and it was very challenging. I tried a roll up Jpole and a MFJ long ranger and some other tricks and nothing I did helped very much. VHF was nearly useless. This trip I used my Icom IC-705 on VHF and it was terrible S9 plus racket, until I realized the preamp was on. I turned the preamp off and it worked very well with a noise floor of about S1. I was using the roll up J-Poll again at about 15 feet. I occassionally got a burst of noise but 90% of the time it was good and was able to easily make a couple summit to summit contacts on VHF. Im going to try to pick up a 2 meter band pass filter and play with that the next trip. I have never found a place free of noise up there. Doesnt mean there isnt one, or a better location than the spots Ive tried, I just havent found one.
HF was also pretty noisy, especially on 17 meters, which was S9 racket and the noise blanker barely touched it. The spectrum scope on the 705 showed noise spikes at regular intervals on 20 meters and 40 meters but there was lots of open space between to operate in with normal noise levels. This trip on HF I was using my MPAS Lite Vertical. Its possible that using a vertical was making the noise situation worse on HF. A horizontal wire antenna of some kind might be quieter.
Recommendations to maybe combat the noise racket are to take a good VHF radio and a band pass filter if you have one. On HF try using a horizontally polarized antenna to maybe improve the noise situation there.
Regardless of these issues and a seemingly poor day for propagation I still had a much easier time of it on VHF with the 705 than I have had in the past, and was able to make 34 contacts, 15 of which were S2S. Two of contacts (both S2S) were on VHF and the rest on HF. It all worked, there are just some challenges that you might be able to minimize with some knowledge and planning going into it. Hope the info helps.
73
Joe, WB7VTY
