w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

Part of the San Francisco Bay Area’s World War Two history is situated at Richmond on the Contra Costa shoreline. Here are the shipyards where the women and men on the homefront built the Liberty Ships that carried troops and materiel to the Pacific theater and beyond.

Occasionally, my family enjoys to take advantage of some of retail opportunities available in the repurposed shipyard buildings. Naturally, I see the POTA opportunity available at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park US-0754.

Last time I was here, it was the middle of summer and the westerly winds from the Pacific plus the density of park users prompted me to operate from my vehicle in the visitor center parking lot. Today, though it was cloudy, the winds were calm and the place was fairly empty.

Instead of using the only available tree to hoist a wire antenna, I could keep a smaller footprint by clamping the MFJ telescoping whip to the fence rail on the pier and sitting out on a small wooden platform.

Using an alligator clip, I extended the ground connection to the other railing in hopes of getting a good match on 20 meters. The KH1 reported a 1.0:1 SWR so I figured the ground system was working well enough.

This activation was scheduled ahead of time and I was spotted shortly after starting to call CQ. A steady sequence of callers helped get this activation done in less than 20 minutes.

While my 5 watts into a quarter wave next to the salt water bay was probably doing OK, I’m sure the DX with SM3NRY was entirely due to Thomas’s massive pile of Yagis doing the heavy lifting.

After wrapping up the POTA activation and pulling down the antenna, I took a few minutes to check out the Rosie the Riveter Museum. The exhibits are very well done, engaging, and informative.

The experiences and sacrifices of homefront workers in transforming industries to support the war effort are artfully on display to keep history alive. I definitely recommend the museum, POTA or not.

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When I sat down to review the pictures for a blog post for this Rosie the Riveter activation report I realized that I had several photos for a couple of coastal activations earlier in the month that I had not written up.

Here is a brief photo recap of these activations.

73 de W6CSN