Amsat Rovers might find this interesting:
On Sat 18 July in brutally hot weather the 15 mountains were manned from Maine to Ga and APRS packets and messages were exchanged end-to end. Typical Snafu's, I had to turn back 30 mins into my 2 hr trip to go home and get the radio! and another station had to turn back 45 mins in his 5 hour trip to get his coax!
The 4000' hike up Mt Katahdyin in Maine was again done by Tim starting at 5 AM and getting back by sunset. Here is report from MDMTN-7 about half way along the mountains:
"At 1100 I started receiving packets from the south, including ROAN-3, COMERS-4, AOMTN-5 and HWKSBL-6. As soon as Bob was set up on GDHILL-8 around 1220 (an hour 20m late!) I started receiving from the north, and in about 15 minutes I saw KATHDN-15 flying by."
In our 11th year, we now do 9600 and it works fine. And are beginning to invite other mountains within 100 miles of the chain to join us (after the initial end-to-end success). (after 4 hours we usually quit due to exhaustion and heat, success or not!)
The one lesson relearned over and over is that you cannot operate mountain top without some kind of helical or cavity filter. You wont hear anything but QRM. I used the dual band DCI filter so that both the voice channel and data channel were fine on a D710 and dual band omni.
The main page will be slowly updated! (none yet, we are all recovering)... http://aprs.org/at-golden-packet.html
Bob, WB4APR