Hume Park

It was my second attempt to activate Hume Park. My first was when I had a lunch meeting less than a mile from the park, it unfortunately started to rain about the time my meeting ended, so I went home rather than get wet. Today the weather was cloudy but dry. I made good time to the park and soon I was pulling into the lower section and parking the car. There were a couple of vehicles there but generally the place was empty. The park is split into two sections the upper is a large field, a kid’s playground and a dog yard. The lower has an open field, one ball field and a covered picnic area. The latter was ideal for me.

I loaded the cart and walked to the picnic area where I selected a table on the end nearest where I would set up the antenna. The ground was quite wet and soggy making it easy to stake the tripod and supports. Next came the radio and then to try the bands. I started on the 15m band and noticed it quite quiet with periodic bursts of noise. I was concerned about the lack of noise on it considering it seemed to take much longer than normal for my antenna tuner to find a match for the antenna. I heard very little on the band so I started calling, it took awhile but I eventually had a station from North Carolina call back giving me a weak signal strength report. Not a good start.

I decided to scan the 20m band for some parks. I found three I could hear and managed to work them. Reports were OK but definitely on the weaker side. I then started calling on my own frequency and managed one contact after calling for over five minutes. I decided to move back to the 15m band as it was quieter and less troubled by the passing sky trains which cause a large amount of RF interference. Fortunately, they were a little distance away so not as bad as at the park in Surrey.

Over the next ten minutes I managed to contact four more stations from Minnesota and Ontario to Texas and California. It was slow going and then things dried up again. I moved to the 17m band and found a Saskatchewan station calling and I was able to work him. I finally had the needed ten. I called on 17m for a while but no one else came by so I moved back to 20m and called some more. I got two more contacts and then the chap activating the park in Saskatchewan came by on this band and we managed a second contact, signals were weaker here.  I had thirteen in the log and I decided the dampness was getting to me even with the small heater. So, I packed up the station.

Once packed and loaded in the car, I took my camera and went for a walk around the park area. First, I wandered up to the upper area and gathered a few photos, then I returned to the lower section and wandered along the road to the entrance area. I noticed that there was a cliff side trail that parallels the road. It looked interesting with its numerous boardwalks and stairs climbing and dropping as it made its way along the cliff. Not much view from it but it looked interesting. I returned to the car and started for home. The drive went smoothly and soon I was back home relaxing. It was a tough activation, though the band looked good on the charts it proved to be poor in operation. Later in the week I discovered that my antenna was not operating correctly so it was the cause of the low number of contacts. The park itself was noisy both for RF and audio with traffic and train noise. It is not a park I will visit again any time soon for radio though it has lots of good amenities for sports and walkers including the four-legged kind.