w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

Fort Point is a Civil War era fortification that sits beneath an arch at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. While the fort never saw any military action, it gets lots of tourists and being designated a National Historic Site makes it a good candidate for some POTA action!

The story of this activation starts a week before. After activating Olompali earlier the previous Saturday I was still in the mood for doing POTA, so I tossed the QDX and the infamous “JankaPOTAmus” $60 laptop into my pack and drove the few minutes down to Fort Point.

This was to be my first FT8 activation, but it was doomed to “failure”. You see, it was late in the day by this time and while I got a few QSOs in the log they were not enough by the time the clock hit midnight in Greenwich. The POTA rules stipulate that all contacts for a claiming a successful activation must occur on the same UTC day. I uploaded the logs so hunters could get their credit and made plans to return with plenty of time on the clock to get the activation done.

Today’s activation attempt was made successfully in the early morning, before the tourist traffic picked up. At this time on a Saturday morning it’s pretty much all joggers and a few cyclists. Setting up on the park bench behind the Fort Point sign, I can stay completely out of everyone’s way.

The operating position offered sweeping views across San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz Island was straight ahead, Angel Island (another POTA park) was to left, while the Bay Bridge and Yerba Buena Island are in the distance on the right.

Also, it is nice to have your back to the steep hillside. I wouldn’t say this site is particularly dangerous, but it’s a good idea maintain situational awareness any time you’re in an urban spot with lots of tourists. From this vantage point I could keep an eye on my car, not that I could do anything should some miscreant decide to break into it.

A total of 19 QSOs were completed using the QRP Labs QDX digital transceiver running 4 watts into a 20m EFHW. I used the ZM-2 to provide the QDX a “perfect” match to the transmission line, the finals in QDX don’t like mismatched loads.

Contrary to what you might think, operating FT8 from a park bench isn’t a total cake walk. Some lessons learned were; let the software do the work. The auto-sequence will help you get the QSOs if you don’t try to outsmart it. Use the “RR73” response to shorten the overall exchange sequence. Lock down your transmit frequency on the waterfall but be ready to move it to quiet spot, when you’re running QRP you need to be where the loud stations aren’t!

Thanks to all the hunters that helped me get Fort Point down as a successful POTA activation. And, seeing that this site is practically in my backyard, I hope to try further activations in the future using CW and maybe even some SSB.

73 de W6CSN