Redwook Park at 20

Ihave been going to Redwood Park repeatedly since my first visit in the Parks-on-the-Air program. Like Campbell Valley before it, I am working on achieving the repeat offender award in the POTA program at this park. For every 20 visits you gain the next higher award level, the first being at 20 activations. Today marks my 20th activation. I don’t bother to write up each visit as it would quickly become repetitive but for major milestones a fresh write-up is warranted.

This morning, I checked the propagation charts, and they showed that a minor Geomagnetic storm was underway, but actual radio reports were sowing reasonable activity and as the weather was decent, I decided to venture forth to the park. Once I had finished lunch I set out on the short drive to the park. When I arrived, I found a nice close parking stall to the pathway I take to the upper covered tables. I parked and walked the path to see if the tables were available. They were not. The tables were covered with kids’ lunches and stuff, and one could hear lots of kids play in the nearby play area. As this upper table was in use I returned to my car and drove it to the main parking lot.

Once in the main lot I could see that the second-best location I use was open. I parked and loaded my cart with my gear and set out for the lower table. As I made my way along the walkway I could hear loud noise from the group of kids, it was just as well that I wasn’t at the upper tables as the noise from the kids was formidable! I reached the end of the middle set of covered tables and unpacked my cart, as I was setting up the mast a few groups walking by asked about it and what I was doing. All seemed impressed with the activity. Soon I was ready to explore the bands and see who I could reach.

My first task when operating is to explore the bands and see who I can hear and to try and make some park-to-park contacts. I looked over the 10m and 15m bands but found few postings and none that I could hear. I moved to 20m and started scanning the band. This was where the bulk of today’s activators were located, and the band was quite crowded. As I scanned across the frequencies, I could hear some loud signals from other activators and from quite a few hunters, but none responded to me, so I moved on and eventually decided to just start calling on my own frequency. 

I scanned back across the 20m looking for a gap between other activators for a spot where I could start calling. I found a gap at 14.297MHz and there I started calling once I posted my attempt on the POTA web site. It took a couple of minutes but eventually I had a response from a station in southern California. He reported that my signal was quite weak, not a good sign. A couple minutes later a chap in Tennessee responded and he also reported a weak signal though a bit better than the first. He was followed by a second southern California station this time I got a strong signal report then came a second Tennessee! That seemed a bit odd but now the responses started coming in and with good reports. No long distant stations today, only California to the middle of the continent including one Ontario station.

It had been a decent activation with 19 contacts made in 45 minutes of operating. These included five park-to-park contacts. It seems to work better when they reach out to me than when I try them. My final contact for the adventure was with fellow club member Jim who was at home in White Rock a few miles to the west of me. Done with radio I packed up my gear and wheeled my cart to the car. The large group of kids were done yelling in the play area and were now waiting near the parking lot for their bus. They had had a good noisy outing but soon would be carted off back to their incarceration centres (I mean schools).

I packed my gear into the trunk and set out on foot to gather a few photos of the early fall in the park. The leaves had started falling and the ground was covered in places but as usual for the area the colours of the leaves were quite limited being mainly yellows. I stopped by the historic treehouse for which the park got on the POTA list and then made my way to the fairy village. As I approached the village, I saw that the recent windstorm had demolished a number of the houses, and the bits were scattered across the ground. Fortunately, there were a number of new brightly coloured ones taking their place. 

Done with the village I wandered back towards the car gathering a few photos of the different types of redwood trees. I was quite surprised to see how different the leaves were between two species of the redwoods. The Coast Redwood and the Giant Sequoia. I guess they are both called redwoods due to the colour of their bark but are really not that closely related biologically, just like our Douglas Fir which is not really a fir at all. Back at the car I reflected on how the visit went and was quite pleased with the effort. Now to start on the next level – 40 activations, it will be a while.