Activated on August 17th, 2024
After going solo for years, I am now part of a club. In fact, it’s the South Pasadena Amateur Radio Club (SPARC), and I guess we’re also known as The Sparkies. One day about six weeks ago, I was contacted by John KK6ZVQ, el Presidente, asking me if I would like to give the club a talk on POTA. They were planning a First Annual SOTA/POTA fest, and the presentation would be a good primer for the outing. I found the club quite warm and welcoming and after I got home, I immediately joined the club. That was on the 7th of August, the field ops were on the 17th of August. The plan was to have two teams do local SOTA activations, and the POTA folks would gather at US-3548 Rio de Los Angeles State Park.
Backwards planning tells me that if I want to be at the park at 0730, I need to get my derriere vertically polarized NLT 0600. I was still slow, but did make it to the Maison Internationale des Crêpes, which sounds so much fancier than the International House of Pancakes within the planned time. So about 40 minutes and a Denver omelette later, I was on my way to the park arriving a little after 0730. I went on a short reconnaissance to make sure the sprinklers already did their job, which they did, and started packing my folding wagon for my one-shot to the activation spot. It was pretty much the same spot in which I activated last time.
It’s been a while since I put up my small pop-up, but very glad I did. It would serve me well keeping my back out of direct sunlight. I put up said pop-up when I saw Steve KN6ZOO walking towards me. Just before John KK6ZVQ arrived, I saw a small figure with a dark green t-shirt walking towards me. It was Colleen KN6DOQ laughing as she approached me. You see, since the presentation at the club meeting where the SOTA guys were talked about rattlesnakes on the trail, she was quite hesitant to go out into the “wild”. She was laughing because we were, in essence, in a city park with no danger from wild animals.
Eventually, the three of us, John KK6ZVQ, Colleen KN6DOQ, and I were set up and activating, while Steve KN6ZOO was acting as general support to all of us. I tell you; I have never activated a park as part of a club activity. I found it quite enjoyable knowing there were others there that could provide quick answers to questions. Or in the case of Steve, technical support with my HT that went off-line.
Before anything else I jumped on John’s HT, connected to a J-Pole antenna 15-feet high, and contacted Jeff W2JCL who was activating Flint Peak near Glendale, CA on VHF. I then continued finishing my set up and chatting with the others. This is a new experience for me.
Eventually, after two hours I was about to start calling CQ on 18.088 MHz. However, before my first contact on 17 Meters, I made a contact with Colleen and John on a borrowed HT. I’ve got 3 contacts now and haven’t touched my KX3. Shortly after my two HT contacts I did get my first HF contact with Eric K9VIC, one of the instructors at LICW, followed by another instructor Don KC0DWZ five minutes later. I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, the LICW group on the SOTA-POTA channel on the LICW Discord server is a wonderful, supporting community especially for those learning Morse Code.
While activating I could just turn my head to the right and see John under his pop-up and Colleen under her umbrella. It was pretty cool seeing this view of a club outing. So, there were many firsts rolled up into one today. I turned back and continued calling CQ POTA.
Before leaving for the park, I checked what the conditions were like in the morning. 80-40 Meters showed up as Poor, while 17-10 Meters were in the green as Good. After I got home, however, I checked the conditions again and all bands were in the red as Poor. Evidently, Mother Nature was kind in giving us a window of time for our activation. However, don’t be fooled by her generosity as there was a lot of QSB and contacts were made about five minutes apart. The operating condition was exacerbated by band-pass filters that failed to do their job. While John was operating on 10 Meters and me on 17 Meters, he could hear my signal clearly on his radio when I transmitted, and I could hear a harsh increase in noise, about 2-3 dB, on mine when he did.
After a while I moved to the 15-Meter band and had no luck after about 10 minutes of trying. After some chit-chatting amongst ourselves, remember this was also social, the 20-Meter band was where I ended up next. The idea was to get a safety contact even though I was confident my contacts so far were righteous. I did get my last contact from Washington, and shortly there after we collectively decided to QRT.
In retrospect, it seemed quite a long time to activate. My first contact was at 16:13 Zulu, and my last contact was at 18:43 Zulu. That’s two hours, 30 minutes. However, my six HF contacts really took about 25 minutes to complete. The remaining two hours and change were taken up by coordinating our HT contacts, changing bands, troubleshooting my HT, non-filtering band-pass filters and socializing. This time does not include when I got to the park around 7:30 local and leaving around 12:30. My HF contacts, except for the last one in Washington, were in the midwest with one each in Minnesota and Illinois, and three in Texas. On top of that, the Washington station graced me with a 599 signal report!
Yes, I was at the park for a long time. However, it did not feel so. The camaraderie with the club members made the time pass by much faster. About halfway through my time there, Jeff W2JCL stopped by to say hello after activating the summit at Flint Peak. It was great to see five club members there. Again, this is a first-time experience for me. Tearing down after our activations was also great. While I was recording my outro, I saw Steve and Colleen helping John with his equipment. Once I was done recording and after John and Colleen came back from the parking lot, the three of them started helping me pack up. I tell you; it’s never been done so fast.
Yeah…this was très agréable.
Activation Statistics
| Activation Number | 72 |
| Date | 17 August, 2024 |
| Park | US-3548 Rio de Los Angeles State Park |
| Number of Contacts | 11 |
| Historical Contacts | 228 |
| DX Contacts | None |
| Park Activated? | Yes |
| Previous Attempts | 17 |
| Park to Park Contacts | 3 |
| Mode | CW, SSB |
| Radio | Elecraft KX3 |
| Antenna | MPAS 2.0 in the vertical configuration |
| Tuner | Internal |
| Power | 5W using a 3Ah Bioenno battery |
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