w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

The weekend of October 21-22, is the autumn Support Your Parks Weekend for Parks On The Air (POTA) and I fully intended to participate. The plan was to go up on Mt. Tamalpais (K-1178) and activate from one of the picnic tables near the East peak parking lot.

Early Saturday morning I had noted that the Space Weather Woman on YouTube was reporting on Earth directed CMEs, uh oh! Checking the propagation numbers showed sunspots at 129 and geomagnetic field of “unsettled” – not great.

I thought it prudent to head out early to the Presidio (K-7889) and see if I could bag the park as “insurance” in case Mt. Tam failed to yield a complete activation.

The POTA application website showed plenty of spots on 20 meters, but the band was not exactly hopping here on the west coast. It took a lot of calling just to get the first QSO in the log.

QSO number 10 made it into the log just as the coffee ran out. Time to pack it up and go get ready to try activating Mt. Tam.

Driving through southern Marin, we could see that Mt. Tamalpais was shrouded in clouds. And heading up the mountain’s flanks we encountered colder temperatures and some drizzle. This was looking dicey.

The weather at the top of the mountain wasn’t nearly as forbidding as it looked from below. In fact, there were patches of blue and when the sun broke through, it was downright hot.

My plan was to use the jaw mount to secure the antenna but the steel tube fence railing was too thick and the clamp wouldn’t hold. I had other antennas with me, but for the situation, the quarter wave 20 meter vertical was really the best option. I clamped the antenna to the leg of the operating bench with counterpoise wires deployed to bring the SWR down a bit.

This activation had a similar character to the early morning outing, lots of calling CQ POTA and mainly close in contacts. The one coast-to-coast contact had an RST of 119, barely perceptible, but I’m confident we got it done.

Despite the poor conditions, a little persistence yielded two completed QRP activations for the Autumn 2023 Support Your Parks weekend.

72 de W6CSN