w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

Sofar this summer, most of my activations have been at tried and true parks close to home, so there is not much to say about them. But on July 27th, I had the motivation and opportunity to go further afield in the quest to activate new-to-me parks.

The first stop on this pair of activations was Grizzly Island State Fish and Wildlife Area US-10416. Grizzly Island is situated within Suisun Marsh, which at 88,000 acres is the largest contiguous estuarine marsh in the entire United States.

After signing the mandatory visitor log, with details of who I was and what I was doing there, I found a spot on the western edge of the Grizzly Island Unit.

With no trees to hang a wire in, I plopped the vertical on the roof and retreated inside the car, happy to be out of the persistent delta breeze. Yes, the loaded vertical is getting into compromise antenna territory on 20 meters but it doesn’t hurt to be surrounded by a vast saltwater marsh. I certainly had no trouble collecting the QSOs needed to qualify the activation.

With a lull in the action and 15 contacts in the log I called QRT and journeyed out of the wildlife area, stopping at HQ to note my “out“ time in the visitor log.

From there it’s another 10 miles back to the city of Fairfield.

A series of highway connections lead me to the second park of this double-header, Benicia State Recreation Area US-3407

I think Benicia SRA gets the award for having , possibly, the largest signage of any of California’s State Park units!

After chatting with the State Parks volunteer at the entrance kiosk for a bit, I made my way carefully down Dillon Point road. There are several parking areas near the end of the road offering views of Carquinez Strait and Southampton Bay.

I located a picnic table in the shade then used the Spiderbeam mast to raise a half-wave wire for 20 meters.

Feeding the wire at the end with a Sparkplug 64:1 transformer makes a good match on the CW portion of 14MHz. The feed point was held off the ground with a bungee cord attached to a low tree branch.

The QMX came out again for this activation. The frequency used in the Grizzly Island activation was still clear, so it turns out I could just plug in and go.

Fourteen QSOs later and another new-to-me park was in the books. I could have stayed on the air longer, but it was getting late in the UTC day and it was still an hour and a half drive home, so I finally threw in the towel on the “delta double.”

73 de W6CSN

post script – It has been a hundred years since the last “Grizzly” bear was spotted in California. Sadly, they’ve been hunted to extinction in this part of North America. Nevertheless, the California Brown Bear left a lasting impression in legends, on place names, and on the State flag of California.