Routley Park

Today’s adventure took Ralph and I to Port Coquitlam with a visit to Routley Park. This is a decent size urban park. It is surrounded by homes but is large enough to provide space for a pair of ball courts a wading pool, kids’ play ground and lots of grassy areas with large mature trees offering lots of shade. As is our custom when arriving at a new park, Ralph and I set out to explore the area seeking good locations for setting up our radios, while I gathered a few photos of the scenery.

We made good time on the roads and soon arrived at the side street next to the park. This park has no parking area but the street offered ample. The park slopes up from the road and we made our way up the short slope to the grassy area and started a wander across the area. I found the park to be quite a pleasant place; the large mature trees of various varieties made for a very welcoming location. There were only a few people in the park including a mother with a couple of kids enjoying the pool. After completing a circuit around the park, we had decided on our locations for the day and so we returned to the car to get our gear.

I had selected a site just up from the car in the shade of a few trees, the spacing of them allowed for adequate room for my antenna, Ralph walked to the far side of the park. I was soon scanning the bands, but I discovered a very high noise level – S6. It was going to be hard hearing stations today. I guess the proximity to all the houses and urban area raises the ambient level of radio frequency noise despite the visible beauty of the place. Not able to do much about it, I found a station and tried calling him. He heard me and I had my first log entry for the day. I saw that he was activating the historic Pony Express Trail.

After that chap, Ralph called to say he was set up and so we proceeded to make a few contacts between us. Next it was Bob from the White Rock Club followed by a very weak station in France. The French activator – Larry – in Maclas, France , was very persistent and put a lot of effort into reaching me. He is a very dedicated POTA activator/hunter with over 22,000 contacts as an activator and over 40,000 as a hunter. He has worked over 26785 different parks and he was determined to add this one to his log. I looked him up once back home and saw that he is the top hunter in the whole program! Routley had only been briefly activated once before and so it is a new one to almost every one out there.

I continued making a few more contacts over the next 20 minutes but it was very tough with the high noise floor. Ralph called me and said he needed one more contact to complete 10 beyond those between us. So, we kept at for another few minutes. Just before I started packing up fellow club member Jim came on and we were able to just barely work each other. He suggested we try another band and after a few fails, we finally made a second contact on the 40m band. It was actually clearer there than the main 20m band I was using. I finished with Jim and packed up my station. Ralph came by as I was finishing.  We loaded the equipment into the car grabbed our lunches and set out for a shaded park bench.

It had been a pleasant adventure in the park though the radio portion was tougher than we would like. Fortunately, we both made a decent number of contacts and felt that the visit to the park was well worth the effort. As I said earlier this park just seemed to be a pleasant welcoming spot, most are more neutral in feel. I doubt I will be back for radio activity though; there are much better parks for that. Done with lunch we set off for home beating the rush hour traffic. We will likely be back to Vancouver for our next adventure.