QRP AND CAMPING AT 5000' ON MT. PALOMAR

05/01/03 TO 05/06/03

 

Mt. Palomar is located near San Diego in Southern CA. The drive from Burbank is about 3 hours in moderate traffic. Elena (my YL) had reserved 2 of the 3 group camp sites about 6 months earlier through http://www.reserveamerica.com . This was the first weekend that the park was open for camping, bad weather was heading our way, so we didn't expect a lot of other campers other than our group of about 15 or so friends. We were looking forward to a relaxing 5 days of car camping and hiking (plus a bit of QRP!), as my work was slowing down a bit and the TV show that Elena was the Lighting Board Operator on "Life With Bonnie" had gone into hiatus until later this year. It had been a while since Elena had been camping here and I had never camped here. One word of warning, the mapblast.com directions give you some pretty bad directions and ended up having us drive up the back side of the mountain on an old fire road called "Nate Harrison Pass"!!! After a few minutes on the dirt road we realized that mapblast was full of it, headed back to the I76 and headed the way we were going before turning off onto the "Nate Harrison Pass". We stopped at a small store to verify our directions and found that we were on the right path! Upon arriving to the entrance of the park, we stopped at a small store and when I told the lady behind the counter about the directions that mapblast had given us, she laughed and said that we were lucky that we turned back as the road was washed out!!! We bought some ice, a trail map and firewood and proceeded to the campsite.

Upon Arriving at the camp site, we were pleasantly surprised to find that nobody else was around! We got there about 11:30 AM on Thursday May 1st. The weather couldn't have been better. Temps in the low 70's and a clear sunny day. We made a couple of quick sandwiches and then proceeded to find a good spot to set up the tent with the bad weather that was on it's way in mind. The last thing we wanted was water in the tent! There's nothing worse than being damp when camping in cold weather! We found a great spot and put up the tent in a few minutes. After which, we unloaded the rest of the gear and set up the cooking area. At this point the other campers in our group started showing up. We had a nice visit from one of the Park Rangers also, who informed us that the site was completely ours as the other group of people that had reserved the 3rd group site had cancelled due to the impending weather!!! This was great news to us as we'd have the site all to ourselves. We weren't worried about the weather as we had our bad weather gear (Northface Gortex jackets and pants).

After getting the site set up I did a bit of recon to find a good site to set up the radio. On this trip I brought the Elecraft K1 and the same antenna that I'd used during QRP TTF. The antenna was a 40' vertical wire with 8 16' radials. The wire was some that I'd picked up from Apex Surplus. It was #22 silver tinned stranded Teflon insulated wire. Real nice for portable antenna work. After a bit of looking around, I found a site that looked OK and launched the antenna up with the EZ-HANG sling shot fishing reel combo. I pulled out the rig and fired it up. Here are the QSO's that I had from the first setup site before the rain came:

05/02/03        00:15        AA5SI        El Paso, TX        20m

05/02/03        00:45        N0YGY        Littleton, CO        20m

05/02/03        01:48        W6NKT        Morro Bay, CA        40m       

05/02/03        17:25        WA2TDL        Buffalo, NY        20m

05/03/03        03:01        AB5PC        Fresno, CA        40m

On Friday night about midnight the big storm that had been predicted finally showed up. Elena and I stayed nice and dry in the tent as most of the others did as well. A couple of the newer campers in the group hadn't set their rain fly up correctly and also didn't set up the ground cloth correctly (even after we warned them, HI!!!) and got quite wet! Fortunately,  the group site has a nice big Restroom building with AC Power, Running Water, Flush Toilets, Hand Dryers, and HOT Showers!!! (this was unusual to me at a camping site, but kind of nice as I had the charger for my gel cell!)

No On-Air activity on Saturday as it rained pretty constantly. Thankfully George Miller, one of the fellow campers had brought a nice canopy that we all huddled under during periods of heavy rain. I did do some hiking when it wasn't raining too hard, but not too far from camp, as I didn't feel like getting stuck in the muck! We sat around, chatted, drank beer and wine, and had a good time with our friends and made the best of it. That evening the rain subsided long enough for the gals to cook us up a great Mexican feast in celebration of May 5th (even though it was the 3rd)!!! It warmed the belly ;-) We also got to try out Hugh's new 750 watt Inverter with a blender to make up some Margaritas. They were quite tasty and "Brain Freeze" was a prominent ailment among the campers (including myself...OUCH!!!).

With Sunday came better weather. Unfortunately quite a few of the campers had to get back home, so we had to say goodbye to them and bid them a fair journey. With the good weather returning, my thoughts returned to getting "On-The-Air"! The first site that I'd set up at was OK but not as in the open as I liked, so I set up at a new site closer to the camp ground, on a big tree stump. From this location I was able to get the antenna into the open and had some pretty good QSO's. Also in my mind was the ARS Spartan Sprint that was the next day. I had time to get on the air for a few QSO's before the sprint so here's the log:

05/05/03        01:09        AB7IC        Tucson, AZ        40m

05/05/03        02:24        N6BS        Los Angeles, CA        40m

05/05/03        20:29        WS0L        Peyton, CO        15m

05/05/03        20:45        AK7D        Portland, OR        20m

05/05/03        21:33        K5HK/MM        "see below"        20m

The last contact was Carl K5HK. Carl was /MM on a container ship between Los Angeles and Hawaii, about 1500 miles SW of Los Angeles. Carl was running 2 watts from an SST-20 and had a great signal. Since I've been home I had the pleasure of chatting with Carl again on his return voyage! Keep your ears out for Carl on 20m /MM it'll be a memorable QSO when he gives you the QTH ;-)

After the QSO with Carl I decided to wait for the sprint. I needed to save up my energy. I turned the rig back on a few minutes before the sprint. I had put the gel cell on the charger in the morning and had been using the internal AA cells during the day at 3 watts, but wanted the gel cell for 5 watts of output during the sprint. As the sprint started the band came alive!!! Where the heck are all you guys when there is no contest??? Maybe I should start a WKG6CYNTTF contest ;-) The apparent bad band conditions gave way to a wall of signals and I used the 250 Hz setting on the K1 to filter through each station. First one in the log was Seab AA1MY in ME on 20m, so the band was OPEN!!! I was so fired up and having so much fun during the sprint, that I didn't notice by 8:00 that the temps had dropped from around 65F to around 40F!!! As the contest finished up, I suddenly realized that I was REALLY cold. No wonder that my fist was so sloppy on the last couple of QSO's. I put on my jacket, packed up the rig and ran for the fire! Here's the log of contacts made during the sprint for download:

Spartan Sprint Log 05/06/03 UTC from Mt. Palomar

That was it for QRP Portable Ops from Mt. Palomar. We had a real good time with our camping friends and I felt relaxed and ready to get back to work by the time we were packing up on Tuesday morning. If you're needing some R & R and would like to do a bit of portable operation I'd highly recommend this site! It's RF friendly and there are plenty of BIG trees to hang your sky wire from. Wish I'd brought the entire spool, as I could have hung a big loop! Next time...

Here are some pictures of the adventure:

 

The weather was nice when we arrived, but...

 

...it soon turned ugly. Reminded me of England in the Winter!

 

Here's our tent. Stayed nice and dry inside!

 

When the weather started to clear, the fog would lift and then come back down on top of us. Very eerie!! We almost expected some creatures to come flying out of it, but the only one we saw was a fox that raided our camp site one of the nights. Took off with some Garlic Bread we were making ;-) Little bugger took it right off the stove!!!

 

Then on Sunday the skies cleared and the ground started to dry up a bit...

 

Here's a neat rock that has holes in it from Indians grinding acorns. There were quite a few of these around the site. The camp site used to be an Indian Village...notice the water from the rain filling the holes...

 

Here's  me in my bad weather gear. Gortex over a warm layer works very well. Though you can't see in the picture, I was also wearing a pair of Sorel waterproof boots. They are nice and warm!! The big secret to camping in bad weather is to prepare yourself for it, and to stay warm and dry...

 

Here's some of my fellow campers staying out of the rain under the canopy...

 

Here's a few of the die hard camper: Fabris, Hugh, Hans, and Me...Looks like a typical London morning ;-)

 

Here's lil Kevin telling everyone "Quit your Bitchin' about the rain!!! We're campin' and it's fun!!!"...

 

...But I later discovered that Kevin had a secret weapon for staying warm and dry...what else but the hand dryer in the men's room!!!...

 

Here's a nice wide shot of the big tree stump that I set the station up on...

 

Here's a close-up of the station used during the ARS Spartan Sprint. Notice the 8 16' ground radials...

 

Here's a shot of the antenna from the back of the K1 up to the Apex of the antenna...

 

Well That's it for yet another QRP TTF Adventure. I highly recommend Mt. Palomar for some fun camping and QRP portable ops. Stay tuned until next time...and keep an ear out for Hams in the Field! If you are going TTF be sure to register your event with the ARS web page, and if you're at home, check the web page for guys that are going TTF. Your QSO could make their day! Take care...

 

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