w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

Say what you want about California, its coastline is a truly spectacular display of natural beauty. On this first day of July, I headed down the San Mateo County coast in search of new to me parks in my quest to reach 20 unique parks activated.

My plan was to activate Montara State Beach (K-3475), the go about a mile south to visit and activate the Pt. Montara Lighthouse (K-3540), then maybe hit Gray Whale Cove State Beach (K-6450) on the way home. But as you will see, big surprise, things did not go exactly to plan.

First stop, Montara State Beach. There isn’t much infrastructure here suitable for POTA and I was prepared to operate from my vehicle if I had to. However, a little reconnaissance yielded a picnic table on the bluffs about 100 yards north of the parking lot.

Fortunately, most people are here to go to the beach or to surf, not hang out on the bluffs above the beach, so I was free to claim the picnic table.

The picnic table is right on the path down to the beach so I had to arrange the antenna radials north, west, and south to keep them from tangling in the feet of beachgoers. I usually like to have some radials in the direction of the hunters, but that was not possible here.

Cell service was good here, so I posted a spot on pota.app and started calling on a clear frequency. I worked six stations on 20M in the first 30 minutes of the activation. The band was pretty crowded, so I moved up to 17M in the hopes of finding a little elbow room.

I worked only two stations on 18 MHz before dropping back to 20M to try and finish it off. The 10th and last contact of the activation was with N0QLR calling CQ SOTA from Topaz Mountain (W0C/SP-062), a six-pointer in Colorado.

While I was packing up the station after the activation, N6DNM stopped by to say hello. This is now the 3rd time I’ve met another ham while out doing POTA. Nice to meet you Dmitry!

Now this is where the plan changed. I pulled off Highway 1 at the Pt. Montara light, only to discover that the lighthouse is currently closed to the public and the gate is locked.

I decided to go another 30 miles south and try to activate San Gregorio State Beach. There are closer state beaches at Half Moon Bay and Cowell Ranch, but I’ve already scored complete activations from both of those locations.

On the way down to San Gregorio, after stopping at Cunha’s Country Market for a deli sandwich and refreshment, I pulled off the Cabrillo Highway at the old KFS shore radio station. My hope was to poke around and get a good look at the old radio facility, but alas the gate was closed and it looks like unannounced visitors are not welcome.

On to the next park. San Gregorio State Beach was crowded with people on this sunny Saturday. I showed my California Poppy state parks pass at the ranger kiosk and found one of the few remaining parking spaces.

Again, most visitors were more interested in the beach than using the picnic tables on the grass, out of sight of the waves. I had my pick of several.

I might have got out better with my end-fed half wave, but didn’t feel like walking back to car to get the mast so I continued with the tripod vertical, this time setting it on the ground.

Initially, I could not get enough service to support a data connection. This was a problem because I didn’t know what park reference I was at! I should have noted the park ref and even scheduled an activation back when I had signal in Half Moon Bay.

Eventually, enough 4G LTE became available for me to look up the park reference, K-3556. The cell service wasn’t stable though, so I used messaging from the Garmin InReach, through the sotamāt service to post a spot.

As is pretty typical for these beach parks backed by coastal mountains, the activation took just over an hour to complete with 10 contacts on 20M with 5 Park-to-Park QSOs!

For this activation I was able to reach a little further east with QSOs in Nebraska and Wisconsin. Perhaps the band was stretching out a little or the gap in the coastal terrain allowed more of my QRP signal to get through to the east.

Gray Whale Cove SB was out of the question on the return trip to San Francisco. Not enough time left in the UTC day and also I was needing to be back in the City.

I’m satisfied with the two activations I was able to complete, thanks to all the hunters that made it possible. Perhaps I’ll get Gray Whale Cove and Pacifica Beach in another coastside double.