Activated on October 16th, 2023
Today was a different activation in terms of activators. Ed Leung, KN6MZW, and I met at IHOP for breakfast, lamenting the fact that our third member of the outing was sitting out this activation due to health reasons. Our park was changed, and we ended up activating Rio de Los Angeles State Park. Using the member map created by Mark W8EC, I identified and contacted all Alhambra area amateurs about doing some POTA activations. Today was a result of that communication.
After a nice breakfast we headed out to the park. As usual the park was pretty empty but for the occasional person walking a dog. I never really activated with someone else at the same time, so I made sure to have band pass filters for the two bands I was planning on using: 15 and 20 meters. In the future I will need to get other filters for greater flexibility. Initially Ed was planning on activating on 15 meters but offered the band to me as I only had two band pass filters. That was very nice of him.
This was a surprisingly short activation for the two of us. I generally expect my activations to begin at around 1100 and don’t see contacts until around 1200. However, today was different in that we both activated the park before noon. We continued so we could add our safeties and did not pay attention to the time. In my case, that included my surroundings. It was nice today with the temperature hovering in the high 70s to low 80s.
It seemed that Ed and I both had broken QSOs with Denmark. In my case I had an OU station trying to contact me several times, but QSB/QRN kept me from making the contact. I found it interesting that the same country opened up on two bands at the same time. Well, let’s consider, if the MUF along the short path went up to 19 MHz, we could make a contact. So, it looks like Mother Nature teased us with Denmark. However, I was able to make a contact with a Spanish station, EC1D. Simply because I wanted to make sure, even though I had the callsign, I still sent him an interrogative to ensure I had the call. Indeed, he roger-ed me and in the log he went.
Now for the mystery I may have solved dealing with a WA2 station. The QSB was wild and made 559 and 579 signals go nuts. I may throw out the infamous di-di-dah-dah-di-dit a few times and that’s because the otherwise quite readable signal disappears for a moment during the callsign. So, I asked for a repeat a couple of times only to give the station a 559 or 579 report. It seems incongruent, but that was how bad the QSB was. That leads me to WA2AKV. I had him in the log as WA3AKV, which I swear I heard confirmed allowing me to continue with my QSO and logging. Shortly after I kept hearing a WA2 call repeatedly trying to contact me. The conditions were so bad I could not get passed the fourth character. This went on for a few minutes, but I just could not copy the call. Eventually I moved on, bummed that I was so close yet without joy. When I got home, I could not find a WA3AKV and figured I did not copy the number correctly because when I changed it to a 2, boom, there he was. Considering the persistence of the WA2 station trying to contact me, he may have tried to correct my error.
The activation was quite pleasant for me as I was able to interact with someone who spoke my ham language. The planning for this outing was minimal and went no further than a location and BYOF, bring your own filters. Another advantage of multiple operators is that you can peek over someone else’s shoulder and see how they do things, an opportunity to learn. Eventually, all three Alhambra area amateurs will come together for a larger activation in terms of participants. This activation provided me with a great sense of satisfaction as I took another step in my ham radio journey.
Activation Statistics
| Activation Number | 30 |
| Date | 16 October, 2023 |
| Park | K-3548 Rio de Los Angeles State Park |
| Number of Contacts | 13 |
| DX Contacts | 1 |
| Park Activated? | Yes |
| Previous Attempts | 6 |
| Park to Park Contacts | None |
| Mode | CW |
| Radio | Yaesu FT-891 |
| Antenna | MPAS 2.0 in the TDL configutaion staked to the ground |
| Tuner | MFJ 939Y |
| Power | 50W using a 30Ah Bioenno battery with Bioenno 40W solar panels |
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