w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

Contra costa could be translated “other coast” and when viewed from west of the Golden Gate the hills along the east shore of the San Francisco Bay certainly can appear as another coast. So much so that mariners back in the days of sail might mistake the opening to San Francisco Bay as an unbroken coastline and sail right past.

For a while, I’d been eyeing several POTA references along the Contra Costa county and Alameda county shoreline for a possible rove. The plan was to start in Richmond, at the Rosie The Riveter World War II Home Front National Historic Park (K-0754), then work my way down I-80 hitting Albany State Marine Reserve (K-3394), McLaughlin Eastshore State Park (K-3427), and Emeryville Crescent State Marine Reserve (K-3429).

As is usually the case, I got a later start than had hoped for and by the time I was ready for the first activation attempt, the afternoon sea breeze was roaring across the Bay. I don’t think of POTA to be about sitting in cars, but given the wind and lack of sparsely populated sheltered locations, I chose to operate from my vehicle.

I collected the 10 QSOs needed, took down the antenna from the roof of the car, and stowed the FT-818 back in the trunk. We didn’t immediately get rolling to the next park as my family had discovered other fun things to do at this location while I was operating CW from the car.

Pulling in to Albany State Marine Reserve, I noticed plenty of kite surfers doing their thing. Obviously, the wind was still a factor here. Not knowing what to expect, I took all of my antenna options and the MTR-4B transceiver and went looking for a sheltered spot to setup a station.

Hiking out on a narrow strip of land known as the Albany Neck, I found a nice shaded spot that was fairly calm as the wind was deflected upwards by the landform. Also, there was a rickety old bench here to provide an operating position off of the ground.

I set up a 20M EFHW using the fiberglass mast tied to some downed tree branches and ran the feedline to the Mountaintopper, which showed a 1 to 1 match with the Sparkplug Gear 64:1 transformer.

The clock was just about to strike midnight in Greenwich, so I waited a few minutes before posting a spot and calling CQ POTA. At first it looked like I might complete the activation in about 30 minutes, but alas the QSB started getting deep and long so it took nearly an hour to complete the activation.

When researching for this rove, I discovered that K-3427 encompasses much of K-3394, including the operating location I chose today. This meant a second stop to pick up McLaughlin Eastshore SP was not needed. Given this and after getting the two’fer here, I decided not to go after Emeryville Crescent this time.

The activations from this rove earned me the Parks On The Air “Silver” activator certificate. Achieving the next level will have to take me further from my home QTH as the number of close by references that I have not activated is dwindling.