Activated on December 13th, 2024
A few months ago, Dave W8XAL, from the beautiful little town of Greeley, Colorado, contacted me to see if I would like to do a meet-up. You see, he was planning to come down to SoCal to visit with family in the area and thought it might be fun to do a POTA. I had to think long and hard about that. Are you kidding? Of course, I immediately said yes. In this past week, after discussing locations, we settled on Huntington State Beach. I was waiting for him at the park, and he showed up about 11:45, less than two hours after he landed at Long Beach Airport.
No more than ten minutes after shaking hands and introducing me to his wife, Mindy, we were off to the closed lifeguard shack. Dave, like a typical SOTA dude, had a little fanny pack and an 18” wand that magically extends to a 20-foot mast. I, on the other hand, had a backpack, a POTA flag, my MPAS 2.0, and a plastic bag with water and a snack. In case you didn’t know, I don’t do SOTA.
The day was beautiful enhanced by a slight breeze and the ever-present view of the Pacific Ocean. It was almost low tide, so the wide expanse of the perfectly flat sand contrasted nicely with the surf crashing upon it. So, while Dave and I started our search for contacts unknown, Mindy went off with their nice Nikon camera to get some shots of the local birds.
I just realized we never took any pictures of our masts lashed to the handrails of the lifeguard shack. I think it gave the antennas about an 8-foot boost in height. I also have to be more flexible when I am operating out of my normal routine. I have 82 attempted activations, and 72 of them were by myself so I tend to be distracted easily. Seagull!
However, there are things I need to learn how to balance. When alone, I talk to my friends represented by the camera. This time, I forgot about the camera as I was enjoying my conversation with Dave. I am not a pro at doing this camera thing. I think I may have addressed the camera a couple of times.
Right before I was about to start, Dave mentioned our park-to-park. So, we got that out of the way, and of course I promptly logged it as a 59/59 SSB contact. It is corrected of course, but, yeah, I need to do this more often. Especially getting out and enjoying the beautiful weather like the type we had.
Sitting on the sand for so long was uncomfortable, as my legs were cramping. I had to stand thrice, and each time it would have been quite entertaining to watch me do so. That is what happens when you go from being high-speed-low-drag to low-speed-high-drag, with bad knees and arthritis thrown in for good measure. Still, I enjoyed the outing very much.
During my activation, a lifeguard drove up in his pickup truck and parked under my antenna. He was pretty cool and interested in what we were doing. He was impressed with the fact that we could reach all over the world with our radios. The three of us chatted for a bit before he had to leave to continue his rounds.
My contacts made a good spread across the country. The contacts were concentrated in the west, with a couple in the Mid-West, and one each in New Jersey and Texas. However, it looked like Dave was impressed with the one contact from Fairbanks, Alaska. Generally, I heard the stations quite nicely, with readability score of 5s, with only one 4. The signal strength of the contacts was all 5 and above, except for one 4. It seemed like the band opened up right around 1330 local time, as the last four contacts all came in within four minutes.
It was getting a little long in the activation. Dave made thirteen contacts before I got started (old man vs. young man), and I got 12. I QRTed after my twelve, and now I had to stand up! LOL. But, stand up I did and started packing up.
Once back at the parking lot we decided to have a late lunch at the Huntington Beach House facing the beach. Eventually, it was time to leave and off we went. Dave, with an hour’s drive to Anaheim, and me with an hour-and-a-half drive back to Alhambra.
Such is our traffic.
Activation Statistics
| Location | DM13ap15, 33.64618, -117.98802 |
| Activation Attempt | 82 |
| Date | 13 December, 2024 |
| Park | US-3445 Huntington State Beach |
| Park Activated? | Yes |
| Previous Attempts | None |
| Park to Park Contacts | 1 – US-3445 |
| Number of Contacts | 12 |
| DX Contacts | 1 – Alaska |
| Historical Contacts | 12 |
| Mode | CW |
| Radio | Elecraft KX3 |
| Antenna | Chameleon Light End Fed Sloper (LEFS) |
| Tuner | Internal |
| Power | 5W using a 3Ah Bioenno battery |
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