{"id":2641,"date":"2026-07-20T01:00:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T01:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/?p=2641"},"modified":"2026-07-20T01:00:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T01:00:51","slug":"mike-k6str-4x-mtn-goat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/2026\/07\/20\/mike-k6str-4x-mtn-goat\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike K6STR\u00a0\u00a0&#8211; 4X Mtn Goat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mike has a love of all things outdoors \u2013 in particular hiking, biking, backpacking and cross-country skiing.&nbsp;&nbsp;It is no wonder then that he earned the title of 4X Mountain goat at the end of May on Waterman Mountain (W6\/CT-012), one of his favorite peaks.&nbsp;&nbsp;He began his first SOTA activation in the summer of 2021 and became a 1X Mountain Goat in a record-breaking year.&nbsp;&nbsp;This intensity has been maintained to the present date.&nbsp;&nbsp;Mike is one of a few \u201cHam Couples\u201d in that nearly all his SOTA hikes are done with his XYL, Lorene W6LOR.&nbsp; &nbsp;If there is snow in the Mammoth area, they can be found alternately cross-country skiing and doing SOTA summits.&nbsp;&nbsp;As soon as the snow melts, however, they switch gears and focus on higher SOTA summits.&nbsp;&nbsp;Mike and Lorene have been known to do some taller peaks, such as W6\/CD-001 White Mountain, a 10-point summit at 14,235 ft.&nbsp;&nbsp;Mike\u2019s favorite summits, however, are those that offer a quiet serene setting.&nbsp; Mt. Throop and Waterman Mtn. in the San Gabriel range, and the taller peaks in the Inyo range are some of his favorites.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When not SOTA hiking, Mike enjoys building and testing specialized equipment for SOTA.\u00a0\u00a0In recent months he purchased and packaged a transverter board to convert his KX2 into a VHF-capable rig ready to tackle the SOTA 2026 weak signal challenge.\u00a0\u00a0Often, when you speak with him, he has just built and is now testing out a new antenna.\u00a0\u00a0This could be a linked dipole, delta loop, or one of the many others he has tried.\u00a0\u00a0He has built a 40m cw radio from scratch, and most recently worked with N6ARA on a 2m QRP filter, now available on Ara\u2019s on-line web store.\u00a0 He has recently started a blog, and you can find some of his projects there, at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/soldertosummit.com\">soldertosummit.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We congratulate Mike on his 4X and we look forward to continued stories of his home-brewed radio gear and hikes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/K6STR-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2645\" srcset=\"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/K6STR-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/K6STR-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/K6STR-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/K6STR-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/K6STR.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Hiking Cowtrack mountain (W6\/ND-019)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/k6str_antenna-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2646\" srcset=\"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/k6str_antenna-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/k6str_antenna-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/k6str_antenna-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/k6str_antenna-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/k6str_antenna.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Mike on Cowtrack Mountain (W6\/ND-019) where he recently made a 444 km 2m\/CW contact to Butler Peak (W6\/CT-009).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1002\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/bike-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2644\" srcset=\"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/bike-1.jpg 1002w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/bike-1-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/bike-1-768x537.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1002px) 100vw, 1002px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Mike and Lorene frequently bike to their SOTA destination<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Preview image: Home brew Yagi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike has a love of all things outdoors \u2013 in particular hiking, biking, backpacking and cross-country skiing.&nbsp;&nbsp;It is no wonder then that he earned the title of 4X Mountain goat at the end of May on Waterman Mountain (W6\/CT-012), one of his favorite peaks.&nbsp;&nbsp;He began his first SOTA activation in the summer of 2021 and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2647,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions\/2647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}