{"id":2656,"date":"2026-07-20T21:37:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T21:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2026-07-20T23:28:04","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T23:28:04","slug":"tom-kb9ens-1x-mtn-goat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/2026\/07\/20\/tom-kb9ens-1x-mtn-goat\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom KB9ENS – 1X Mtn Goat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Congratulations, Tom, on becoming Mountain Goat #49 in the W6 Association when you activated Waterman Mountain (W6\/CT–012) on 03Jul2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom is a lifelong Ham, licensed as a Novice at age 10 as part of his parents’ (failed) plan to use amateur radio on the family farm. As a tween\/teen Tom could be found operating his station from the “shack” in the corner of his parent’s basement and he says he grew up on 10-meters SSB and lived every day looking forward to or recovering from ARRL Field Day.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[KB9ENS circa 1990 operating Field Day –  2A IL]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward 26 years and Tom stumbled on SOTA in October 2016 when he inadvertently chased K6TW who was on Ontario Peak (W6\/CT-048.)  A month later (with way too much gear) Tom activated San Gabriel Peak (W6\/CT-019)  and was hooked. Tom says SOTA is a perfect combo of Type 1 and Type 2 fun with hardly any Type 3 (Fun Scale<\/a>) and it’s like Field Day … every day! Tom averages about 20 activations a year between work, life, and family and loves getting to meet the SoCal SOTA crew at campouts or on trail (especially when unplanned.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was your favorite activation? “Many favorites, but the first among them would have to be Occidental Peak in October 2017. Up until then I’d been activating with my KX-2 or HTs using phone modes. I had spent my lunch breaks for 6 months trying to revive the CW I’d learned as a kid for my Novice test and was ready to go on the air. My first CW QSOs ever were completed while seated in the bushes on W6\/CT-098. The callsigns were familiar chasers of those days and in a flash I had 6 QSOs in the log. What a rush!” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[KB9ENS seconds after completing his first CW contacts and SOTA activation of W6\/CT-098]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So… 10 years later with 188 activations in the log and plenty of good trail stories to tell Tom looks forward to many more activations … and stories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[KB9ENS on Mt Waterman during his Mtn Goat Activation]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

73<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom – KB9ENS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations, Tom, on becoming Mountain Goat #49 in the W6 Association when you activated Waterman Mountain (W6\/CT–012) on 03Jul2026. Tom is a lifelong Ham, licensed as a Novice at age 10 as part of his parents’ (failed) plan to use amateur radio on the family farm. As a tween\/teen Tom could be found operating his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2657,"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-2656","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\/2656","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=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2695,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions\/2695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w6sota.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}