CN76 is a thin dotted-line grid square along the coast.
The closer part of CN76 includes Grays Harbor with a narrow opening
to the Pacific Ocean. The northern spit enclosing the large harbor
is Ocean Shores (a solidly developed tourist trap city) and the
southern spit is Westport. I've explored Ocean Shores previously
and so skipped that area and went to find places around the harbor's
southern peninsula.
The trip from Seattle is under 200 miles and less than 4 hours
driving time.
Here's a closer look at the target area.
I scouted:
Twin Harbors State Park
(don't go, it's full of screaming kids),
Hills above the town of Grayland with forest service land
(don't go, it's gated off at 46.813901, -124.064816), and
Grayland Beach State Park (really nice!).
It turns out Grayland Beach SP is one of the most wonderful state
campgrounds I've seen.
Clean, quiet, well-kept, and an easy walk to the expansive spectacular beach.
Every campsite is shielded by trees above and between guests.
I paid $45/night for a full hookup site. It felt luxurious to run all
my gear from shore power. Generators were not allowed so some of my
preparations were wasted, but there's no way to know before the trip.
I somehow managed to convince myself to not feel bad about the
extra work.
The operating setup got a few small changes since my last trip to
North Point CN78. The SSPA amp is strapped to the floor's L-track
on the left end of the table. The big power cords and coax are tucked
under the anti-fatigue mats (works great to keep them out of the way).
The fridge moved under the table so the battery could be more out of
the way, protecting its fragile wiring. This turned out to be awful:
the fridge requires crawling on knees and holding a big hanging flap
out of the way. Maybe it's my new diet plan. I must find a more usable
spot.
The "minimalist camper van" bed and operating position that I designed
is working out to be every bit as nice as I hoped.
The open aisle from chair to mast makes it easy to turn without
putting on shoes. This improves comfort and reduces tracked-in dirt.
Results
We used Slack VHF Chat channel to coordinate many attempts to reach
hams on my list of 40 who had indicated interest. Our constant hope
is to reach those chasing the grid for FFMA. This trip much later than
the E-skip season on 6m and conditions didn't support anything beyond
1200 miles. It sure would've been fun if there was triple-hop to
Puerto Rico for Edfel KP4AJ!
I was on-site about 43 hours with total on-the-air time about 24 hours.
72 contacts on 6 meters using WSJT
Farthest QSO was 1,160 miles to K7BG in DN94.
Second-farthest 1,074 miles to John NA6L using the new Q65 mode.
Once again I consumed my remaining cellphone data and bought
another 1 GB. This is tiresome. I need a new data plan.
The biggest problem was lack of propagation – the equipment worked great.
There was practically no skip; almost all my contacts were by ground wave
and meteor scatter, which should be expected at this time of year.
This might have been exacerbated by the lowland sea-level location and
a 5-degree horizon to the east but there's no way to tell.
That's always the dilemma of 6-meter expeditions: you don't know if
there'll be any skip until you get there. The best expeditions will
stay in one place for a few days.
A new power outlet strip with four USB built-in outlets solved my
problem of filling a standard 6-outlet strip with USB charging warts.
The new outlet came from Amazon with brand name Pukvat.
It only has 3 regular power outlets which, after eliminating all my
USB warts, is actually one more usable 110v outlet than my previous
outlet.
The kilowatt amplifier worked flawlessly, an Icom PW-1, and the extra
6 dB of transmit power certainly helped finish a bunch of marginal contacts.
The PW-1 remote head on the desk is particularly convenient.
However, this amp is large and terribly heavy to install in the vehicle.
My dream is to someday replace it with a smaller and more portable amplifier
powered directly from a 48v lithium-ion battery bank.
Thanks everyone for finding me on the air. I'm pleased to add two new spots,
CN76ws and
CN76wu,
to my rover location database in this rare grid.