Hello again, you might think I’m on a roll now that I’ve had my first activation under my belt… and you’re right, I AM! On my way home from Santa Rosa yesterday, I got a Ham Alert notification on my phone and it was K8MRD, Mike of Ham Radio Tube, one of my favorite Ham-Tubers on Youtube doing a POTA activation in TX. I listened a bit before calling out to him and I made contact! Wow I’m stoked! Now if I can get KI6NAZ, Josh of HRCC, that would be really cool since his youtube videos were some of the first ones I watched before getting into ham radio and eventually used his technician exam videos and the accompanying hamstudy.org website to study for my technician and general license exams.
I decided on Benicia SRA since it was closer to my house and I had a couple of simplex nets I wanted to join after activating. This a nice park located on the edge of the SF Bay in Benicia. The park ranger at the gate gave me a quick overview of the park and warned me that there were a lot of fishermen at the end of road due to salmon running through the area. I found a nice parking spot overlooking the bay and I started hunting stations to test my gear and warm up. The last station I tried contacting was on 14.250 but I couldn’t get him to respond to my calls. After a few tries, he decided to QRT even though he had quite a pile up going on. He took a couple more and left the frequency. I waited about 5 minutes to be sure he was gone, then I called out to verify the frequency was no longer in use and then posted my spot and started calling CQ. 20 minutes later I had about 12 contacts. The 20m band started to fade and I heard more static than stations and called last call then went QRT as well.