w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

This Parks On The Air activation of Thornton State Beach (K-3577) started out inauspiciously and was not without its challenges. Since I expected to have some good mast raising possibilities, I opted to use the end fed halfwave antenna instead of the tripod vertical that has been getting so much use recently. However, while packing the kit for the activation I discovered that my usual EFHW transformer, the Sparkplug 64:1, had gone missing!

Searching the shack was not yielding up the missing Un-Un and the clock was ticking. Then I remembered I had a homemade 49:1 transformer that I built in a project box a couple of years ago, but had never used in the field due to its size. It would have to do!

Arriving at the park, I setup the station on a bench, north of the parking area, near the horse stables. This is where I encountered the next setback. Just as I started calling CQ POTA I was approached by a woman enquiring as to what all this “stuff” was. I stopped the automatic sending on the QCX-Mini, plucked out my earbuds and explained the whole POTA thing.

Brenda, as it turns out is the owner of Mar Vista Stables thats sits adjacent to the park and uses parts of it for trail rides along the beach. She very nicely requested that I remove my mast and antenna because the horses were coming up from the beach shortly and were likely to be spooked by the unfamiliar objects in their field of view.

Well I certainly did not want to be the cause of any spooked horses, especially with what were probably, inexperienced riders atop them. So I lowered the mast and rolled up the antenna.

After this false start, I relocated to the part of the park south of the parking area. This part of the park doesn’t have convenient benches to operate from, but on the plus side there were fewer people and no overhead power lines to contend with.

Note for future activators: if you want to use the park north of the parking lot, call Brenda at Mar Vista Stables (650) 288-9196 and coordinate with them so that you can avoid conflict with the equestrian activities. It’s probably just easier to go south and stay clear of the horses. You could also operate from your vehicle, but that’s not very sporting.

So, now on to the actual radio operating! I set up the mast again on a convenient wooden post and strung out the antenna. As mentioned, I’d never tried this 49:1 Un-Un before, so I had no idea how it really performed. I didn’t want to present a badly matched load to the QCX-Mini which has no SWR indicator or protection circuit, so I put the ZM-2 matching unit between the radio and transformer.

A match was easily found not far from where the ZM-2 controls would be set if operating into a 50 ohm resistive load, so it would seem the transformer was doing what it was supposed to.

I started calling a little after 2100 UTC and logged the first contact at 21:16 UTC. Thereafter it was slow but steady progress, with plenty of fading signals, until I recorded seven QSOs. Getting the last three proved to be tough sledding, but since I had no place to be, I wasn’t leaving until the activation was successful or the clock hit midnight in Greenwich. The 10th and final QSO made it into the log at 22:32 UTC.

This leaves me just one more park to activate, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, to complete all of the references on the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula. Stay tuned.