Cariboo Park

It had been a few weeks since Ralph and I visited a new park, though I had been to some local parks, it is nice getting out to new ones. This park would also be Ralph’s 100th unique park activation so he was quite excited in reaching that milestone. Cariboo Park was the last listed park in Burnaby that I had yet to activate so it closes off another group of parks and makes the distance ever greater for me to find a new one.

As has become our norm, Ralph arrived at my place around 10:45 and we set out for a coffee and then the park. The drive went quickly with little traffic getting in our way. Tesla had given me another month of free self-driving and we tried it out on our way out. It did quite well, and was much improved since the previous time a few months ago. I noticed that the braking was much smoother than before. That said, I still turned it off to deal with the tricky spots. Perhaps in a year or two it will be much more reliable. Though a techie who loves new toys, I am tired of being a guinea pig for testing new stuff, so I think I will wait a bit longer before using the self-driving feature regularly.

We arrived at the park and parked along Cariboo Road, which provides the only parking for this park. There was lots of room as the park was mostly empty. We then went for a walk exploring the various aspects of the area. A large ball field occupies the north-western end, a kids play area and empty wading pool in the middle and a tennis court to the east leaving a grassy/treed area to the south. After considering our options, Ralph selected a spot next to the Soccer field and I picked a bench in the south corner. We returned to the car to get our gear and then set out for our two locations.

I soon had my mast placed and the antenna strung out. The trees were spread apart enough that I had no issues raising my antenna. I then set up my radio and waited for a call from Ralph on my hand-held. He soon was heard and we began our 11-band set of contacts. That went quickly taking us 14 minutes to complete. We then both moved to the 10m band to see who else we could reach. I scanned the 10m band for other park activators and was able to reach a chap in Arizona followed by a Surrey activation at Blackie Spit. That was followed by a third park in Oregon from a park between Salem and Eugene.

I then selected my own frequency and began calling. Almost immediately I had my first response. Followed by another. I had multiple hunters at a time and I had to manage my pile-up so any could be heard. It was a great experience and I was busy for the next 35 minutes taking in 40 contacts. It was busy enough that I didn’t have time to eat lunch. There was a brief slowdown at the 25-minute point when I stopped to talk to Ralph. He had a less successful time as he discovered late into his activation that he had enabled a signal attenuator which prevented him from hearing his responders to his calls! Once he fixed that setting, he was receiving responses like me but it was too late for many who had given up on him. We went for another 10 minutes and I made a few more contacts though I wasn’t actively calling by that point.

I finished calling and ate my lunch having achieved 52 contacts in the log, including those with Ralph. It was a very successful activation and with the band conditions being in good shape it makes reaching others quite easy. The summer doldrums were definitely passed once again for the year. We then packed up our gear and returned to the car. The drive home went smoothly as well as we were ahead of the soon coming rush-hour traffic. If one can time their activity between the two compute periods the driving isn’t all that bad. Even though Ralph had a technical issue he still managed 14 contacts beyond those with me, which would have been a very decent number for some activations. I will likely be back to Campbell Valley Park next week as Ralph will be unavailable for a few weeks. Then perhaps a drive back to the north-shore!