San Fernando Benchmark

I had been looking forward to this activation for quite some time. The thought of being able to over look the San Fernando Valley here in Southern California seemed awe inspiring to me. I made sure to go to bed early for this one as the gate opens at 6am. Once you reach the Santa Clara Truck Trail turn right onto it and make the first left going past the gate. It will lead you through a winding road, past an old Nike missile site and past the Camp 9 Fire Station. After Camp 9 stay left and you will dead end, there on the left by the fenced in area are some parking spots.

End of the road where you park.

From there it’s just a short hike to the summit. This is a good one for those hot days when time is of the essence.

Onwards!

Arriving at 7am the was promising. Perfect weather, a nice quiet summit and oh wait…. I forgot my HF tripod and balun to mount my Buddistick. This would not make for a good activation. Still though I setup my trusty FT-817 and tried to score some FM contacts. This is where things went south. I only had one contact from KB6CIO. He was gracious enough to alert another SOTA participant of my presence. Unfortunately he couldn’t hear me. It would have been nice to get a summit to summit. I think I will go back up again to solidify activating this summit. It’s bad when a summit takes two trips to activate but sometimes it happens.

Summit over looking SFV

Gear

Calling CQ….

FT-817