This upcoming weekend is the Washington State QSO party fondly known as the Salmon Run. For the uninitiated, a state QSO party is a friendly radio contest where operators try to make contacts with all or as many of the counties in the state as they can. Some counties would naturally be more difficult to contact based solely on low numbers of participants. This is all new to me so I’ll be learning via the trial-by-fire method.
And because bikes, I’m going to be doing this “expedition style” by cycling around dirt roads & trails with my radio gear. I have identified a good general area to operate from that spans a couple of high-demand counties: Whitman and Adams. Rock Creek Recreation Site has a couple of water falls, a rough but relatively flat trail system, and allows for camping so I can crash overnight.
Once arriving to the parking/camping area early Saturday morning, I’ll head north about six miles to Revere Wildlife Area which happens to be a POTA activation spot in Whitman County. As this is nothing I’ve ever done before, I’ll probably sleuth around the frequencies a bit and make a few random contacts in order to get the exchange down. Then I’ll go ahead and spot myself for the park and see what happens.
At some point I’ll probably get tired of sitting there and will move west into Adams County; there are a couple of lakes around that might be nice to set up at. Once I’m feeling mostly done for the day, I’ll ride back to the car for dinner and get camp set up. As the evening comes and the band conditions change, I’m hoping that I can get onto 80-meters and make some close-proximity contacts… we’ll see how successful that is (I’ve yet to get on 80 meters).
Sunday morning will be a drive south towards Washtucna where I’ve found a SOTA summit in Franklin County. This is going to be a bike (maybe a little hike) activation. I don’t know how much time I can commit to hanging out here but we’ll just see how it goes.
The Gear List:
| Radio Equip. | Camp Comforts | Consumables |
|---|---|---|
| ICOM 705 | Crazy Creek chair | homemade sandwiches |
| Dually 80–10 EFRW + 40/20/10 EFHW | NRS Snooze Pad | jerky & gorp |
| Wolf River Coils SOTA Special | Thermarest 20F down bag | breakfast oatmeal |
| MFJ-1976 120″ whip | JetBoil | bottle of wine |
| Bioenno 3Ah | Birkenstock EVA sandals | spf 50 sunscreen |
| Dakota 7Ah | Harbor Freight 400W inverter | tea & instant coffee |
| ICOM 50A handheld | Paperback |
+++
Done and dusted. The weekend was a success in that I got on the air, made a bunch of great contacts and thoroughly enjoyed myself. There was some good riding and a few minor mishaps, but that’s what field work is! In the end I logged 82 QSOs in 32/39 counties and made my very first 80m contacts. Also spotted about two dozen mule deer and three coyotes over the two days.
