Pitt Meadows Athletic Park

Ralph and I like getting out to a new park at least once each week, for today’s adventure I picked the athletic park in Pitt Meadows. It was a wide open park with lots of parking so it looked like a good one to visit for the day. Ralph arrived at my place for our 12:30 departure and we made quick time to the park. There are a number of parking areas in the park as it has a lot of activity. When we arrived the second parking lot was almost empty and so I drove into it and parked near the washroom and service building. We jumped out and went for a short walk and quickly picked some places where we could each operate.

Returning to the car, we loaded up our gear in my cart and we walked back to a line of trees where Ralph was to operate. He was able to hide in the shade of the trees, though warm in the sun the breeze did add a bit of a bite when in the shade. I then walked back past the service building and a kids playground for an area with a few scattered trees. I settled into a spot shaded by a tree and proceeded to set up my station. I found the ground to be very hard and pushing my stakes into it for the antenna took some serious pushing. The breeze was tipping over my mast and so I decided to use my stakes to secure each of the tripod legs.

Once the antenna was secure, I assembled the radio and scanned the bands. I could not hear any other park activators nor any hunters. I decided to pick a frequency near the top of the 20m band and then started calling. I spotted myself on the POTA chart but even so it took quite a few minutes before I had my first contact - Indiana. Another two minutes and a station in Arizona came by. Then no one was to be heard for 15 minutes of calling. The band was in poor shape and getting through was proving a challenge. Finally, I had a third contact, this chap from Idaho. Another ten minutes of calling to reach my fourth but a fifth came along right after who was close-by in Bellingham Washington.

It was now 2pm and Ralph called me to see how I was doing. He had 8 contacts and I 5. We decided to give it another half hour. Finally I had a sixth at 2:10  but then things picked up a bit and over the next 15 minutes I managed 7 contacts. I now had 12 in the log, enough to activate but for an hour’s worth of calling it wasn’t very good. Ralph called back to say he reached 10 and we decided to pack up and go get a cool drink.

It had been a tough go, one of my contacts said that I was the only station they could hear on the band. I didn’t hear very much myself. It seems like summer is going to be tough for making contacts from parks. Perhaps people are outside enjoying the sun and not near their radios. The drive back went well, we stopped at the Cloverdale Starbucks and enjoyed a cold coffee before heading home. Though challenging, it does feel good to get the needed number for the park activation.

This park wasn’t very scenic as it was mostly ball fields and courts. It was actually busier when we arrived than when we left but perhaps after dinner the place would fill up with kids teams.. Where I had set up a paved path was located that high school kids were using going to their gym class activity. At one point a teacher stopped to ask about my activity as he led his class past, he seemed a bit interested but was unable to stop long. A few of the students walking past also asked about my set up. There are lots of opportunities to share the hobby when activating a park. The park is near the Pitt Meadows Airport which accounted for the number of noisy planes flying overhead, that didn't help with hearing any callers. As we drove off, Ralph reminisced about the days when he was taking his pilot's lessons which were done at this airport.