Visiting Forsyth Park

I have activated almost all the Surrey Parks listed on the Parks-on-the-air list. One of the last yet to do included Forsyth Park in North Surrey. It isn’t that big a park and when I looked at the Satellite images it was quite different from the current look. The whole area has undergone a huge change in the last couple of years. So, I wasn’t sure as to what I would actually find. Streetview seemed closer to current layout though.  I left home a bit after noon and drove the half hour drive to the park. Upon arrival I found a parking spot alongside the road just next to the park and the main walkway entrance.

Once parked I grabbed my camera and went for a short walk through the park. This park has quite a massive play area for kids, way more than the basic few climbing structures. Here slides were built right into a rise in the ground. The park also offered a double dog park. One fenced area for little wannabes and a second for actual dogs. It is the only park I have seen where it is split into size groups. I also spotted a picnic table in the shade near the kids’ area that looked perfect for me. I returned to the car and gathered my equipment and made for the table.

As I was approaching the table a mother and son moved in on it and were there when I arrived. I asked if I could join them on the other end and they agreed. The mother was asking about what I was doing and found it interesting. By the time I was ready to start operating the boy had moved off to the play area and the mother wandered that way to keep an eye on him, leaving the whole table to me. I rearranged my stuff a bit and then scanned the bands.

The noise floor was high in the park as we were close to a large apartment complex and surrounded by homes. I was able to hear an activator in South Dakota and called him and got a response – I had my first Park-to-park contact in the log around 1:10pm. I continued scanning and found a second, this chap in Colorado. I then picked my own frequency and began calling. Another activator in Idaho came by and gave me a third park-to-park. I had a couple more contacts and then another Idaho activator in the big Forest park there. A while later I had a pair of operators contact me that were also in the same Idaho Park. That seemed very odd to me but they said it was a big park and the other operator was not known to them.

I now had the needed ten contacts but it took another 10 minutes to get the next one – a chap in Alberta. I decided to try the 15m band and found an activator and worked him at a park in Utah. I then try calling on my own frequency but after 15 minutes I gave up having had no takers. I moved down to the 17m band and began calling there. That yielded two more contacts a chap in Indiana and Ontario. Then things dried up a gain and I decided to do a final pass through the 20m band again. I found one station in Colorado which gave me my 8th park-to-park contact for the day. A decent number – over half of my contacts.

It had reached 2:30 and I decided I would pack up as I had what I needed and things seemed to have slowed down. Packing up went quickly and I returned to the car to start the journey home. The route had me take a side road to 140th which was backed up due to a traffic light and school traffic. Fortunately, it lasted only a block but that was a very slow block. I stopped in at the Starbucks at Fraser Highway and 152nd again and then returned to the route. I reset the route home in the Navcom to see if the delay getting coffee would reroute the path due to changed traffic. It did give me a different way, this time using 168th rather than the highway= on 176th. The road was actually quite clear and lights seemed to be working with me for the drive home. It was a successful adventure to the park, and I saw a few new things at this one that were not all that common out there.