Pony Express Trail POTA US-4578 with Vertical on Project TouCans

Heartened by the vertical antenna results at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park US-0757, I headed out to a pier in San Francisco near the Pony Express Trail, US-4578. Project TouCans did not disappoint, and I made one eyeball QSO in addition to the 7, (yeah, I didn't quite make the activation before the keyer's batteries ran out), QSOs I meade on the pier. Here's a map of the QSOs and Reverse Beacon spots.

Blue markers denote QSOs while yellow markers denote RBN spots. The color scale indicates signal strength using resistor value color coding. I find it really interesting that the rig made it up to Alaska again!

The other interesting point about this activation attempt is the location. I took the MUNI F to the Washington Street stop and then walked just a bit north to Pier 7

Here's what the rig and antenna setup looked like. The antenna is one half of TouCans' ordinary dipole taped to what's supposed to be a carbon fiber rod, (it doesn't seem to harm the antenna performance much which has led some to believe it is in fact a fiberglass rod), to form a quarter wave vertical. Yes, that is a metal raling holding the antenna up. Interestingly, it didn't seem to hurt much, and may have helped. The QSO to Alaska was lined up pretty well with the railing, (see the detail photo of the map below.)

The other side of the dipole antenna is once again dangled off of the pier and into the Bay's saltwater as a ground. The rig laying horizontally on the ground is important. That's what cuts out AM broadcast station interference for TouCans. I'm not sure why yet.

detail of the QSO to Alaska along the metal railing

The entire outing was a lot of fun and reamrkably easy. Definitely: if you have an antenna, just string it up regardless of the conditions and see what happens!

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