Oregon Coast POTA Rove

by Dan (N7CQR)

Last December (2024), I was planning a trip with friends to Tucson, AZ, while my wife was traveling abroad. I enjoy the opportunity to go somewhere warm during the winter if possible. Alas, the trip fell apart, and I decided to take the opportunity to spend a week traveling on the Oregon coast and activating as many parks as possible. My plan was to start on the central coast around Newport and travel as far south as time permitted. Sometimes we get a nice stretch of warmer weather in this region in December and January. The coast is blessed with many small and medium-sized state parks, and many are oceanside, so I would have plenty of options for daily activities within a relatively short distance from where I would be staying.

I picked four towns to stay at as I drove south: Yachats, Coos Bay, Bandon, and returning north to Newport. I compiled a list of about 25 potential POTA sites between Newport and Bandon on the southern end of my route. Obviously, I wouldn’t be likely to activate all of these for various reasons such as temporary closures, weather conditions (especially as related to exposure to rain or wind—very common on the coast), access to a good area to set up, or other unforeseen circumstances. And there’s always variable propagation to deal with.

Here on the West Coast, we just don’t have the population density and thus fewer active hams than the rest of the country. My goal was to activate three parks per day. Sometimes it was a very short distance to do this, but often I had to drive a fair amount to get to some of the more remote locations.

The other challenge was planning what gear to bring, as I might be operating in a couple of different conditions depending on the weather. Ideally, I wanted to set up outdoors when possible, but realistically, I had to have a plan for also operating in my car. Since I’m a dedicated portable CW/QRP operator, I don’t have any permanent radios or antennas mounted in my car.

My two main portable radios are my KX2 and KH1, which are small enough to use in the car without taking up a lot of space. For an antenna, I had a Diamond K400 door/hatch mount that I mounted on the rear hatch of my Kia Sorento, and I had a telescoping whip that would extend to a quarter wavelength on 20 meters and could be adjusted for 17, 15, and 10 meters depending on which band I was using. I had to get an adapter (McMaster Carr hardware) from the 3/8×24 thread of the mount to the M10 metric thread of the whip.

The tuner in the radios would make up any mismatch. I ran RG 316 to the front seat and attached a couple of 13-foot counterpoises to the antenna mount for good measure. The mount was grounded to the car body through the mounting bracket as well. I almost always got a very good match, so SWR wasn’t a problem, especially since I only ran 5 watts.

For outdoor operation, I had the KH1 with the whip, the KX2 with the AX1/AEX1, my Chelegance MC-750 vertical, and my K6ARK end-fed random wire with the 9:1 balun built into the BNC connector.

Here, particularly in western and coastal Oregon, we have an abundance of trees, but they’re often Douglas Fir with very thick foliage that makes it tricky to toss a line into a tree. Especially at the coast, it’s often quite steep and rocky, such that you don’t have a long stretch of level ground to toss and retrieve a line. Or, if it’s an open wayside, there might not be any trees close by to use. Options are always a good idea.

When I had to activate from my car, I found that using the KH1 was easier than wrestling with the KX2 on my lap or the console, especially for CW. I could hold it in my hand and log using the tray with the little log sheets. However, I know there are some good solutions for using trays or shelves that mount in the vehicle for larger radios. Still, most of my operating is outdoors whenever possible.

As expected, sometimes I’d arrive at a park and encounter situations that made it difficult to activate. In a couple of cases, the parks (actually more like small waysides off the highway—usually on the coastal side) were closed due to maintenance issues or, in a couple of cases, flooding.  Continue reading QRP by the Sea: Dan’s POTA Rove Along the Oregon Coast →