I spent a couple days camping out this Thanksgiving in Joshua Tree National Park. It’s a beautiful place and we got plenty of time to go bordering and hiking. Late November was not too hot during the day and not too cold at night, though I was glad I brought my layers to sleep in. There is very little cell phone service in the park, I ended up driving to Ryan Mountain Trailhead to get cell phone service when needed.
I took my VX-8R after programming in the repeaters within 50 miles of Joshua Tree using the CHIRP repeater book integration. I love that feature and end up bringing my radios to more places since I can get the local repeaters programmed in a lot easier than before. I wish CHIRP let me bring in all the bands at once instead of one at a time.
No one on simplex
As expected I was never able to bring anyone up on the 2m calling frequency (146.52Mhz) and I never heard anyone one calling. I gave a bunch of calls from the desert floor as well as a couple hundred feet up on top of the Hall of Horrors (a rock climbing area in the park).
From on top I was able to hear conversations on the N6LXX linked repeaters (good quality on 2m and 440 and passable on 6m, my first 6m repeater ever heard live!)
From the top of this mini mountain, I was able to get the repeater tail when doing a radio check, but was never able to get anyone to return my call.
Back on the ground
When I was back on the desert floor I was still able to hear conversations on the N6LXX repeaters but couldn’t seem to get into the repeater with just my rubber duck.
When I did some more bouldering I set up the APRS on my VX-8R and was able to decode some good packets. Since I don’t have the GPS attachment for my Yaesu I wasn’t able to get a good location put in manually. I did a little math in my head to convert from my map lat/long to the Degrees Decimal minutes, so wasn’t sure what the error bars on my reported location really was. Heard some real people and some weather stations.
No one had a calling frequency in their packets so I didn’t make any attempts to call.
I’m pretty sure I was getting direct decodes as opposed to going through a digipeater. I wasn’t ever able to get digipeated and didn’t see my call end up on aprs.fi.
Lessons Learned
I should have brought my roll up j-pole to get out better
I should get an app to give me the exact lat/long format that the Yaesu needs for manual position reporting
If I had more time I might have brought my 40m QRP rig and tried some SSB
FRS radios would have been helpful around the park / hiking with the family since there was no cell phone service
Satellites would have been VERY doable due to the clear horizon pretty much everywhere
N2TIQ's radio blog 
Did you try to hit the Morongo Basin Club’s linked repeaters (W6BA and WB6CDF)? We’re heading to JTNP to do some climbing and are thinking of bringing our Yaesu FT-60’s and a roll-up j-pole (as you suggest). Thx. KM6LTQ
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I’m not sure, there was a 6m linked repeater I actually heard traffic on likely coming in on the 2m/70cm side). I picked that up from on top of “Hall of Horrors”. I also connected to someone on 146.52 simplex doing a SOTA somewhere in Palm Springs with just my rubber duck. That was from the ridge right above the Lost Horse Mine (worth the walk, and then up above the mine head to the ridge) Have fun, should be beautiful. It was nice to listen to shortwave at night also since it was so “radio quiet” with no city interference . We also bring the FRS radios for use around the camp site which always works great at JT. Enjoy!
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