Bear Caving at Redwood Park

My week-end was overly busy for me this past week-end. I had a club radio event followed by a lunch, a 50th year celebration at my church followed by a dinner at my son’s celebrating his daughter Eva’s 8th birthday. Then come Sunday, I attended the 9am morning service of my church for the continuation of the 50-year celebration. I quietly left there and made my way to Redwood Park to operate in the quarterly Support-Your-Parks Weekend followed by my weekly coffee with the radio club and then dinner out with my wife Carolyn! I’m glad it is Monday and I have nothing planned other than an impromptu lunch with my son Geoff whose birthday it was. I guess retirement can have its busy days.

It was a double bonus for me at the park as I have been working towards the higher levels of the repeat-offender levels and the next one was at 60 visits. Well, that was reached on Sunday. I arrived at the park around 11am and found the park not very busy, I was able to get my preferred table and I was soon setting up. As I completed the setup a chap came by wondering what I was doing. I explained the equipment and then I scanned the bands looking for a contact. He found it interesting and I gave him one of my brochures explaining POTA. 

The bands were not in the best shape and everyone was crowded onto the 20m band, it being the quarterly event week-end there were many more activators out at the parks, at one point I saw over 200 listed. The numbers made it hard to find a place where one could operate that was not overlapping other users. There were also some users doing other activities and contests that were crowded out. The Parks-on-the-Air program has gotten very popular. It being easy to participate in and getting outside into nature makes it attractive to all ages.

I scanned the bands and managed a single contact; I could hear others but they were dealing with multiple responders and couldn’t hear my weaker station. My friend Jim was down at Peace Arch Park, a few kilometres away, and once I heard him, we proceeded to make a few park-to-park contacts across a few bands. I then went back to calling having found a frequency that was open. After a while I realized it was below the range of a large number of U.S. operators and so I decided to move up frequency to where everyone could contact me.

Over the next hour I completed 12 more contacts. It was a slow go despite the large numbers operating. Being on the far coast of the continent makes one more susceptible to atmospheric interreference and today was no exception. I did fortunately have enough contacts in my log to qualify for the support-your-parks award and for completing my 60th activation. The 60th repeat-offender award level has been given the name of ‘The Bear Cave Award’. I had reached this level at Campbell Valley Park but no further as I moved my efforts to Redwood once the park got on the list since it is much closer to my home and the facility is a bit better.

Having achieved the Bear Cave level, I am now planning on working towards the next one at 80 visits – the Fishing Hole award. It will take some time and effort as the spring/summer months tend to be tougher on the radio due to the higher ionization levels in the atmosphere.  I will start this week and hopefully I can reach the next level before summer ends. I also took some time to gather a few photos of the wild flowers that are now out at the park. It is a pretty time of year and a good one to be outside enjoying it in the warmer weather.