Driving directions: Take highway 30 west from Longview.
After Clatskanie, Westport, and
Wauna, you will start up Bradley Hill. At the crest of the hill,
look on the left for the first dirt road.
As soon as you start up the road, you will see a cellsite on the left.
Keep going and follow the
main road up using CB channel 29. After 4.5 miles, you will want
to keep right. You will see
a rock with "OSU" painted on it if you're going the right way.
At 5.5 miles you will see a rock
pit on the right and start going downhill. This condition is
normal - do not panic. After 8.5 miles
you will see a rock pit on the left, and you will take a right up the
hill. Stay right at the next
intersection and you will be on Foster Hill road. Take the next
right on Simonsen road and at
the next intersection go straight. You will come to a gate -
if it's locked, go left - otherwise,
go straight. You will wind up at the site either way, but straight
is better.
Warning: On the way down, you'll find an annoying deceptive fork
in the road. Go left.
On the main line, you'll find another one farther down - go right.
Nicolai Mountain in the rain. |
Bottom to top: 6 M, 2 M 8 element, 432 15 element, 903 9 element, 1296 15 element, 220 ground plane. |
Another view of the antennas. |
The drive-over base for the mast. |
The crossover for the ladder rack horizontal support mast. This makes it easy to assemble it on the ground and tilt the whole thing up. |
My station was QRP portable, or "Single-Op-Portable" as they
call it now - IC706 turned down on 6 and 2,
Midland 13-513 turned down on 223.5, and IC-402 at 4 watts
on 432. I never did get 903 and 1296 working.
Final score has been officially Cabrillo-ized.
Official numbers:
6 meters: 112 / 37
2 meters: 60 / 14
223.5: 13 / 2
432: 27 /
7
Official score: 15,120
Comments: Score was down, but had fun.
No dirty transmitted signals.
Mostly good weather and road conditions.
Didn't get bothered by wild animals, including drunk ones in 4x4 pickups.
Gripes: Six meters opened east on both nights, but was weak.
Six opened to California, but long skip only - no Bay Area.
More stations moved off the calling frequencies, but not enough.
Stations who moved DX up to the next band repeatedly, with the
DX stations never reappearing on the band where they started.
One or two stations with really poor operating procedure, and a few more
with really poor receivers.
Where do the DX stations point their antennas 98% of the time when we
can't hear them AT ALL here?
A rover who clobbered my contact with a VE6 in a new grid.
Toolbox got full of water on Saturday.
Insects landing on my hand while sending CW.
The ARRL. (See below)
Updated- 7/23/02
-
I may have wasted my time on this contest,
since the ARRL may not publish
my score if I haven't made the top 10 or 5
in the Single-Op-Portable category.
Isn't it interesting how ARRL has eliminated
the only two ways for the average amateur
to have their callsign show up in print in
QST (station activities and contests) while
still expecting us to pay for membership and
support their "activities."