w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’d activated my home park of K-7889 The Presidio of San Francisco National Historic Site. So after work today, I collected some radio equipment and headed down to East Beach for a POTA attempt.

I like East Beach because of the close proximity to the Bay waters which I imagine help with propagation and there are usually picnic tables free to operate from on weekday afternoons.

The down side of East Beach is that the afternoon sea breeze can be a challenge for keeping my vertical antenna vertical. In fact, this time I brought a throw weight with line and EFHW thinking I’d deploy the antenna by tossing the line over one of the short trees scattered around the picnic area.

However, as I considered this plan while driving to the site, I realized I failed to pack an UnUn transformer or even an antenna tuner, so the wire antenna idea was scrapped. The vertical tripod antenna would be used once again.

I prefer to use the tripod with the legs set to one notch of angle to allow more space underneath for the coax lead to hang freely without a sharp bend to clear the ground. But this means the tripod base is not as wide as it could be and thus not as stable. To prevent tippage, the tripod legs were pinned down with two tent pegs instead of just one. This was sufficient given the rather lighter wind conditions today.

I didn’t hear a ton of signals when I switched the radio on. While the SFI was high, above 200, the geomagnetic field was unsettled and there was a better than even chance of solar flaring. Nevertheless, the activation was pretty normal with 14 QSOs in about 45 minutes.

I logged some familiar call signs as well as some new ones from across the USA and Canada. There was definitely QSB at play with some calls starting at RST 339 but finishing up at 599, and vice-versa. Thanks to all the hunters that contacted me today and made the activation a success.

72 de W6CSN