Lake Sammamish SP (US-3216) 12/3/24

As the weather turns less pleasant, my willingness to activate new parks diminishes, because I often have very little idea if I will be able to find shelter from the rain. At Lake Sammamish, I know there are three picnic shelters, and it’s very unlikely they will be in use when I show up on a rainy day. It doesn’t hurt that Lake Sammamish SP is in second place in terms of travel time for me (Marckworth SF is just a few minutes closer, but has absolutely no facilities). So there’s a part of me which says “Let’s just work toward a Kilo (one thousand contacts) at Lake Sammamish”. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. It gives me a chance to work on skills, during a period of great propagation, instead of confronting operational challenges like weather or a lack of a decent place to sit.

So on 12/3, I headed down once again to Lake Sammamish SP to do an activation.

Setup

When I arrived, the favorite picnic shelter spot to work from was still inaccessible (or at least a much longer walk) and it was cold and breezy, so I decided not to activate from the picnic table by the beach and instead worked from the picnic shelter right by the playground. In the summer, when the weather is warm and there would be a huge crowd of kids in the playground, that shelter would not be a great choice, but on this day, the only people using the playground was a couple using the equipment for agility training for their dog.

So that was my choice, once again setting up the easy, peasy Chelegance MC-750 just to the east of the shelter and working from the picnic table closest to that point.

I’m finally remembering to hang my Discover Pass (park pass) from the mirror when parking, which means I don’t need to dash back to the car to put it there when I see a ranger come through!

No SSB

I’ve been working on building my CW confidence, so no SSB nor digital modes for this activation. There are some pragmatic advantages to doing a CW only activation, mostly it means schlepping less gear to the picnic table, because I don’t need the Xeigu G90, the headset, the larger battery.

All I need to do a CW only activation is the antenna, feedline, and the small bag the I keep the KX2, key, and battery in (along with other bits and bobs, like the earbuds, adapters for connectors, &c). Oh, and of course my laptop, for logging.

CW

The park staff were running chippers to work through the huge piles of branches and downed trees, so the ambient noise level varied between very quiet during the lulls in chipper activity, all the way up to quite loud as they ran entire tree trunks through a chipper. So once again I did the activation using earbuds. I don’t much like the reduced situational awareness when using earbuds but I’m slowly coming to appreciate the isolation when working a weak signal, so I guess I’m slowly coming around to using the earbuds most of the time.

My plan going in was the use the same band strategy I’ve been using recently, but reversed, this time starting with 20m and working my way down to 10m.

The results: 20m: 13 QSOs in 17 minutes
17m: 1 QSO in 7 minutes
15m: 4 QSOs in 9 minutes
12m: 12 QSOs in 17 minutes
10m: 4 QSOs in 5 minutes

Box Score

Total QSOs: 34
Park to Park: ?
Total CW QSOs: 34
Time spent operating: 1:12 hours
Solo CW bonus points: 34
Pleasant weather bonus: 5
Favorite Picnic Table points: .5

Things lost: 0
Things broken: 0
Equipment frustration time: 0 minutes
Vital gear not included in loadout: 0

Final Fun-O-Meter^(tm) reading: 9.0