K-3259

Sacajawea State Park

For my second outing I decided to take along more power. That decision appeared to pay off well. I took my IC-7300 and ran it at 100W into my 17′ whip and once I got spotted I dealt with a near-constant pile up for over an hour.

Sacajawea park is located near my home in the Tri-Cities right where the Snake River dumps into the Columbia. It’s roughly triangular in shape with water on two sides with the Snake to the east and the Columbia to the west. There are large areas of grass, shade trees, plenty of picnic tables, and public restrooms. You need either a day pass or a Washington Discover Pass to use the park.

I went out on a sunny and warm Tuesday, which I chose partly for the pleasant weather and partly because I judged that there would be few people using the park. It was about 80 degrees and clear when I arrived. I found a well-situated picnic table that was close to the restrooms and my parking spot and which had a nice view of the Snake River through the trees. I had set up my antenna in the back yard several times, so getting situated was easy . I was ready to call CQ in about 10 minutes. Back in June, I had been a guest of a very gracious and accomplished ham who was building out the “radio ranch” in Montana and who gave us colorful cowboy hats as a gag/souvenir. Just before my first CQ, I put that hat on for good luck.

I was, frankly, surprised at the responses. I had alerted a local friend, K7NT, to listen for me and call if he could hear from me in the hopes that he’d put me over the 10 QSO minimum I needed for an activation. At first he could hear my pile-up better than he could me, and in my inexperienced state I wasn’t IDing properly so he wasn’t certain it was even me until I finally sent my call. Hearing him was a pleasure, and I could tell he was using his bug. We had a very brief chat before I got back down to business, and after about an hour and 15 minutes, I managed to call CQ twice with no response. My log showed 54 QSOs and I was bleary-eyed. Not a bad outing, I thought, so I sent my QRT and shut it down.

One thing that completely slipped my mind was to tune around for any P2P contacts. Next time!