Capturing the Art of Nature
Sequoia Ridge Park
A small park with lots of brambles
Category
Parks on the Air
2022
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In my quest to activate new to me parks, I found this little park not overly distant from home. It has an interesting name and I hoped it would have some special dynamics to it. So with that in mind, I looked for the next clear day when I could head out and explore the park and activate it in the Parks-on-the-air program. A few days later the weather looked good and I organized myself to head out around 1pm. That morning Ralph texted me to ask if I wanted company, and so he joined me for the trek to the park.
We left my place a bit after 1pm and made our way north along 168th and then west on 80th. We drove right to the end of 80th which terminated on the ridge paralleling 152nd street. We could hear the road noise from the busy street from inside the park. On the map this park has a wider area off of 80th and then narrow trails south through the residential areas. However, when we arrived the trails were blocked off with construction fence and we could only access the open area on the north side of 80th. This was where I had planned to set up so all was fine.
Once we had parked, we walked the park area and a pathway that lead down the ridge to 152nd. We didn’t go too far down the path looking for the southern trails as they just didn’t seem to be there. Returning to the car we unloaded the gear and wandered over to the grassy field. Ralph selected the closer lower area, he planned to try an end-fed random wire antenna today to see how it performed. I wandered up the path to the higher area where I could stretch out my OCF antenna. In the middle of the open area is a wide pit filled with brambles. Only a narrow strip on the south and east and a bit to the north were grassy and suitable for walking on. The park offers very little space to users.
Once I had wandered to the upper north end of the area I selected a somewhat level spot for my table and operating site. I then hoisted my antenna into the air and started calling on the 15m band. I could hear Ralph’s CW coming through on my radio as we were too close once again. Though it was there, his signal wasn’t overly disruptive. I worked a few stations on 15m but there seemed to be very few out there. After 10 minutes on 15m with only 1 station logged I switched to 20m, I could hear many more stations and it took some hunting for me to find a frequency I could claim for my activation.
Eventually I had found a vacant frequency and I spotted myself. Once I started calling, I soon had the start of a steady stream of contacts. Being on 20m along with Ralph increased out cross interference and I was having some difficulty hearing stations while Ralph was transmitting. He also reported the same problem when I was transmitting. Fortunately, I soon had enough contacts in the log to consider the park activated. I was a calling for 20 minutes by which time I had 22 logged contacts. Ralph also had enough by now and so we decided to pack up and head home.
It was a successful time out and we managed to both work some distance stations. I worked stations in Quebec, New York, New Mexico, California and Alaska to name a few. Ralph worked a pair of stations in Japan. So, his end-fed wire did quite well, my OCF also pulled in the contacts as it normally does. Though the park seems a bit shy of the exotic name it has, it still provided us a nice time in the sun and a place to stretch out a wire.