Saturday April 23, 2022

The Presidio of San Francisco National Historic Site (K-7889) is a five minute drive from my home QTH so it's the easy choice for a spur of the moment POTA activation attempt. Since I had some free time, good weather, and the itch to play radio I went for it today.

The Presidio is undergoing a multi-year transformation from an old overgrown Army post to a very well manicured National Park. It's actually becoming a challenge to find some out of the way spot to raise an antenna and do some POTA where you will not be swarmed with cyclists or trampled by hordes of joggers. Add to that, the fact that the Presidio really doesn't want your car in their park, future activation attempts might have to be walk-in only.

Even though it was a Saturday, I got in early enough to park at the WW2 Memorial Monument which overlooks Sharks Beach and…

I didn't intend to get on the air, I was just walking around with my radio kit in my backpack for exercise. But when I got into park K-7889 I couldn't resist the urge to try out my new Sparkplug Gear EFHW transformer.

I raised the 20M efhw on the Spiderbeam mast and setup the radio on a fallen log. I responded to K5SJC's CQ POTA with a p2p and worked him from park K-7889.

The temperature was on the chilly side and I was short on time so a full activation attempt will have to wait for another day.

Lessons learned:

Setting up a POTA station on a log is not ideal. Better to find one of the many available picnic tables and be a bit more comfortable.

Seems my phone was interfering with the Pico keyer. I could find no other explanation for why it stopped keying the radio. Moving the phone out from under it, solved the problem.

Take the time to trim your EFHW before deployment in a challenging spot. Using a tuner …

The family vacation in July provided the opportunity for some portable QRP field operation. This outing made for a lot of "firsts."

First time getting on HF in many years. First CW qso in even more years. First time putting my FT-818 on the air. First time participating in POTA and SOTA.

Originally I had hoped to activate Calaveras Big Trees State Park K-1134 for POTA. But with all the other firsts going on and the effort invested in learning how to setup and operate the portable station, tearing it all down to setup it up again with less supporting infrastructure was more than I was in the mood for. So I just left the EFHW where it was, strung up between the deck and the trees and was content to operate from the comfort of the cabin.

Overall I made five QSOs, which may not sound like much, but I consider it an unqualified success, given I haven't even been active on HF for ages.

Here is the log: