A Visit to Glen Valley Park

It had been some time since our last joint activation and Ralph was hoping to get out to a park at Buntzen Lake unfortunately the parking lot reservations were all taken for Thursday. So, I found an interesting alternative in north Abbottsford. Neither of us had been to this park before and so it would be a new adventure for us. The day was expected to be fairly hot so finding shade to operate our radios in would be essential. Fortunately, the satellite images showed that Glen Valley Park has some open grassy areas surrounded by large trees – ideal for our needs.

Having selected our destination, I waited for Ralph to come by my place and then we set off for the park, the navcom indicated a 37-minute drive. We followed its route and made good time to the park. The drive took us through some interesting areas neither of had been at before which that added a bit of fun to the drive. Upon reaching the park I drove in and selected a parking stall, most were empty. We then then went for a short walk around the grassy areas and picked operating locations for the two of us at opposite ends of the clear area.

I selected a nicely shaded picnic table that was in the midst of a grass area. Setting up the antenna went quickly though the grass was very hard packed. I then listened across the band and heard a very loud station from Saint Petersburg in Russia. I tried calling it but they couldn’t hear me. I moved on and worked another park activator then I settled into a frequency and started calling, finding an open frequency however, took longer than expected. I could hear many stations across the band but they couldn’t hear me.  From the start of my calling, I had no responses for over 20 minutes, so I decided to move up the band to a higher frequency. There I worked 2 stations fairly quickly but then it dried up again.