w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

A quick perusal of some of the POTA operator profile pages will show that while I am certainly enthusiastic, I’m far from prolific. Some of those ops are on another level entirely, hundreds of activations and 10s of thousands of QSOs.

That said, when I get close to achieving one of the POTA “awards”, I do develop a bit of obsession over it. For example, my regular visits to The Presidio of SF finally put the “Oasis” level Repeat Offender Activator award within reach.

The Presidio is a former Army base first occupied in a military capacity by the Spanish in 1776, then by the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now it is a National Historic Site with old barracks, concrete gun emplacements, and a National Cemetery. Of course, it is also a POTA entity.

I thought I’d have “Oasis” in the bag this past Friday when I slung my pack on my back and walked the mile from my home QTH to the Arguello Gate of the Presidio.

I set up the 17 foot telescopic whip vertical just below Inspiration Point and steadily put 10 QSOs in the log in 15 minutes before the band took a downturn.

Once home, I uploaded the log to pota.app only to realize I made a bonehead move, today’s activation was actually the same UTC day as activation number 19 late Thursday afternoon so it didn’t count separately and didn’t qualify as number 20 for the Oasis award.

No problem. I’ll just head out early the next morning, set up at my usual spot and knock out number 20 with all the Saturday POTA activity sure to be happening. But when I got to my usual location, I found the whole of East Beach had been taken over by a sporting event. I think it was a canoe race on the Bay. There was zero parking available and way too much activity to get tangled up with.

No problem. I’ll just relocate to the West Bluff picnic area, it’s still early enough that I should be able to snag a table for a little while.

I worked one local station, hunted two other activators, but otherwise spent 40 minutes sending CQ into the aether with nothing to show for it. The few activations on pota.app were mostly being spotted by the RBN and not so much by other hunters. My own signal was occasionally picked up by the RBN, my reports were not strong.

As it turns out the sun had been acting up and agitating the geomagnetic field into “minor storm” territory, largely shutting down propagation on HF.

No problem. I can just take break and finish the activation in the afternoon when the ionosphere has had a chance to recover and before 00z rolled around.

Come afternoon, East Beach was still unavailable and by now West Bluffs had filled up with other park visitors. So I setup in the wide open space of Crissy Field, no picnic tables but lots of room to spread out and not be in anyone’s way.

The geomagnetic field was merely “unsettled” now so theoretically I should be able to finish the seven QSOs needed for the complete activation before the clock ran out. In reality, contacts were no easier to come by than they were in the morning. I finally had to accept that I was beaten for this round.

No problem. I’ll just come back next week after work and snag activation number 20 for K-7889. Just as soon as the Monday workday ended, I tossed my pack in the car and headed down once again to the edge of San Francisco Bay.

There was plenty of parking at East Beach on a Monday afternoon and my “usual” picnic table was available. I setup the Mountaintopper MTR-4B with the 10 foot telescopic whip atop the GRA-3750T loading coil, it was a bit too breezy for the 17 ft antenna. I know from experience that with this configuration I can get a good match with the sliding coil set to 2.2 on the relative scale. Sure enough, the meter on the MTR4B showed an SWR of 1.1 to 1 – good to go!

After self-spotting on pota.app and calling CQ POTA on 14.061 MHz I was met with a fairly steady stream of hunters that helped me validate the activation in 20 minutes. The “Oasis” award was now assured! But I wasn’t tired of working CW, so I stayed on frequency and continued to work stations for the next 40 minutes. I called it day after hunting WB0RLJ for a park-to-park at Chalco Hills in Nebraska.

When sitting there working stations on the other side of the country, I imagine that the ops on the other end would be amazed if they could see this short little antenna and sub-5 watt transmitter that is reaching out and tickling their detectors from thousands of miles away. All of the hunters have my gratitude. Thanks for taking the time to tune in and work my little signal from the Golden Gate.

Now on to the “Fox Den Award” and I hope I can help regular hunters earn Repeat Offender statuses of their own with K-7889.

73 de W6CSN