Category: Activation
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Asilomar State Beach
In early October we took a couple days off work for a mini-vacation down the central coast of California. Just past Monterey, in the town of Pacific Grove, is Asilomar State Beach and conference center – also designated US-3399 for Parks On The Air. The conference center is part of…
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Delta Double
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…
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Scenic POTA 3-Fer
Sometimes when doing a POTA activation, the scenery makes you stop and take a picture or two. This particular QTH is enclosed by three National Park POTA references: The radio was connected to the Gabil GRA-7350T vertical on a mag-mount. This antenna setup lives in the trunk of the car…
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Return to Richardson Benchmark
This post is about activating Richardson East Benchmark for Summits On The Air as well as Golden Gate National Recreation Area for Parks On The Air. The route taken today was the same as on a previous hike up to Richardson Benchmark. Please allow me to refer you to that…
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Muir Woods National Monument US-0949
Muir Woods is named after naturalist John Muir who can be said to be the father of our National Parks in the US. This park is not far from my home in San Francisco, but has eluded me from activating for several years. The main attraction at Muir Woods are…
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Vollmer Peak W6/NC-298
Vollmer Peak is a one pointer situated in the hills between Oakland and Orinda, California. The “trailhead” is at the overflow parking lot for the Redwood Valley Railroad, a fun narrow gauge railroad just off Grizzly Peak road in Tilden Park. You can walk to the peak via a paved…
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Sonoma State Historic Park
The town of Sonoma, about an hour north of San Francisco by car, is a location steeped in California history. In fact, the current US State of California can be said to have originated here. In the middle of the 19th century, before the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill,…
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Weekend with the MTR3B “Currahee”
After a couple of months delay, the much anticipated, new Mountaintopper MTR3B-v4 arrived in my mailbox this past Friday. This post is about my initial experience with this new radio. As soon as I could dip out from work, I took the new Mountaintopper down to the shores of San…
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Whole Lotta Rosie
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…
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Contrasted Landscape
Back in May of 2023 I visited San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge (US-0212). At the time, I was escaping the cold and drizzly weather in San Francisco as described in this earlier blog post. There aren’t facilities here to support large groups so I was pretty confident that the…
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