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POTA Camping Trip to US-1178 Mt. Tamalpais State Park

 I had dreams of activating the US-1178 each of the three days I planned on being there. I didn't get it done. Oh, but the other stuff I did do! Strap in. I may have to split this into a few different posts because there's so much stuff!  I documented the updated transit route from furthest away San Francisco BART station to Pantoll Campground I tested Starlink—a system I worked on a few years ago—with regard to doing my new work while out camping (how meta ☺️) I hiked the Dipsea Trail for the first time in over a year. Ouch. I camped for two nights. I'd hoped to play radios from four different locations in three different parks. I wound up playing radios from two different locations in one park, the one I was camping in,  Mount Tamalpais State Park . Here's a view of the campsite and its very adjacent hiking trail. And here's how the radio was installed at the campsite It's in the TouCans and a Stick configuration with its carbon fiber mast vertical whip . No...
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Comparing the Internal vs External Wire Carbon Fiber Mast Vertical Antennas

 A classmate of mine had an interesting question about my recent post on using magnet wire inside a carbon fiber mast as an antenna . He wanted to know if I saw any differences in the signal between the internal wire and the external wire cases. Using the Utah SDR , and GloTEC F2 layer data , I was able to compare the two antennas. It turns out that just looking at the S meter at that time of day in Utah, there's almost no difference. Both the external and internal wire antennas are between S8 and S9 on the two different days.  The s-meter I was able to view on the Utah SDR station, KD7EFG is also reported as SNR on the RBN. The maximum reading for the exterior wire was 38 dB while the maximum reading from the interior wire antenna was 39 dB. The two measurements were appoximately 20 minutes apart on different days. The exterior wire antenna readings are from 8:39 AM PST the 7th of Januay. The interior wire readings taken at 8:53 AM PST on the 12th of January. So, the questi...
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BART Route To East Bay POTA Sites

 This is the route I take to East Bay to do Parks on the Air activations! (Minus the bicycle.)
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A Carbon Fiber Mast Vertical on the 20 Meter Ham Radio Band

  Carbon-fiber masts don’t have to be the villain. For Straight Key Month I ran a quarter-wave 20-meter vertical two ways—first with 12-gauge wire taped to the outside of a Goture carbon-fiber mast, then with 18-gauge magnet wire laced inside the mast. Result: both versions delivered S9 into Utah from downtown San Francisco, and the internal-wire build was far stealthier for city operating. I finally got to do a long term—a few hours—test of the TouCans and a Stick vertical antenna with magnet wire on the inside this week! The interior magnet wire setup worked just as well as the same antenna rigged with 12 gauge wire taped to the outside of the carbon fiber mast did. The rig was S9 into the Utah SDR that morning. Here's a look at the antenna setup and results. There are more text details below the video.. Construction To construct the antenna I removed the brass bottom of the carbon mast, removed the upermost segment, and then inserted 18 guague magnet wire through the...
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US-0757 POTA Notes 2026-01-09 US-0757

 An AM broadcast station was loud in my headphones for about two minutes. Then, TouCans mysterious noise cacnellation circuit charged, and the POTA was off and running. According to the POTA website, I haven't activated US-0757 , aka the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park , in about eight months. It was nice to be back! We'd had about a week's worth of atomspheric river rains, so it was pretty phenomenal to have this view during the activation. The temperature was in the low 60s which was very pleasant. I didn't go for a swim this time, but I'm going to get back to that soon as well. View of the Golden Gate Bridge from over my shoulder The transit ride—SF MUNI 54 to BART to San Francisco MUNI 30—was a piece of cake as always. The video below shows part of the route as seen from the bus window. I just now realized that I copied my opeining into the video twice. You didn't imagine it. Sorry about that :) I stopped for lunch at the Buena Vista I...
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SKM QSOs 2026-01-08

 Project TouCans and kitchen window antenna are continuing to work well during straight key month! This is just a quick update. The rig layout can be seen in the video below.
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First Day of SKM

 I made eight QSOs on my first hour long straight key month shift operating as K3Y/6! Points of note: I'm still operating five watts from the kitchen window in San Francisco. The ' shiny F2 ' cutoff was not disproven. The critical frequency between San Francisco and Utah did go below 7,750 kHz and there was only one QSO that went east of Louisiana out to New York. That happened when the fof2 value was about 8200 kHz. Does the Data Fit with ND7K in Arizona? I noticed that while Utah had disappeared again, I was still being spotted in Arizona at 01:00 UTC. Looking at the fof2 values to the spotting station, ND7K revealed that this spot conformed to my evolving rule of thumb. The midpoint fof2 is at about 8,000 kHz at the time, so above 7,750 kHz. Note for future use: The rig's freuqncy/fof2 = 14.0574/7.750 = 1.8138 The factor is for use with this figure.
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