As soon as I saw an ad for the Elecraft KX1 I knew I had to have one. I built mine in January while it snowed and rained here in Oregon, and I looked forward to hiking with it in the spring.

Others didn’t wait around. One of my first KX1 QSOs was with Steve, NØTU / P who was field testing his KX1 (only two serial numbers before mine) after climbing a snowy peak in Colorado. He had to break off the QSO when his fingers got too cold to send. Another inspiration was working Paul, WØRW/PM, my first ever QSO with a pedestrian mobile station. Also in the Rockies, he worked me while walking along with a KX1 in his hand, a vertical whip in his back pocket, and a radial wire trailing along behind.

In late May I had a chance to hike with some non-radio friends in Point Reyes National Seashore so I decided also to do some portable operation there on my own. Point Reyes is a little north of San Francisco and bisected by the famous San Andreas Fault. Because most of Point Reyes is on the Pacific plate that is slowly moving northwest relative to the North American plate, in a half a million years it will be the northern edge of an island that will also include Los Angeles and part of Mexico.

My first radio hike was a 10 mile round trip to Tamales Point, the park’s northernmost boundary. About halfway up this peninsula trail I set up on a hilltop overlooking Tamales Bay, about a half mile to the east.

For an antenna support I used my 20 ft. Sunny Day fishing pole (available from WorldRadio magazine for $20). Weighing just two pounds and collapsing to four feet, it’s easy to carry; you can even use it as a walking stick. I stuck the pole in a rabbit hole and suspended a 26 ft. piece of wire that sloped down to the KX1; my counterpoise was a 17’ wire thrown along the ground. The little rig’s built-in tuner found a match easily.

I leaned back against a rock and put the rig on a small board that fits on my lap. I like the KX1’s built-in paddle, but sometimes I forget that the action works best at the very tip. For a little more power I hooked up the 12v / 2.9ah battery I borrowed from my K2. I was putting out about 3 watts.

I had a beautiful hilltop view but didn’t hear many signals on 20m. I answered a CQ by Ross, NS7F in Arizona and managed a short QSO but knew my signal could use some saltwater enhancement.

On the trail again I passed through a herd of Tule elk and saw the most vivid red I have ever seen on the wing of a blackbird. When I came to the peninsula’s point, I was standing on a 75’ bluff overlooking stacks of mussel-covered rocks and the wide entrance to Tamales Bay. I remembered that this was also the prow of an enormous chunk of land slowly slipping north inch by inch.

This time I tied my fishing pole to a shrub, leaned back with a view north across the bay and ocean, and let the built-in memory keyer send CQ on 30m. I snagged John K2AOP in Arizona, but again my signal was weak. Listening in was Clark W7IML who gave me a call from Snohomish, Washington, straight north. I think the saltwater take-off must have made a difference because at one point Clark said I was 20 over on his IC-706. This was more like it.

The next day I hiked a mile down the ocean beach of Drakes Bay until I came to the entrance to Drakes Estero; on the map this looked like another radio hotspot. In 1579 Sir Francis Drake used this place to repair his ship on his voyage around the world. There is a plaque and large anchor there in his honor.

Close by I lashed my pole to a post that was only a couple of feet away from several hundred yards of saltwater rippling to the east. This time I tried both a sloping wire and then a shorter vertical wire, which seemed a few db better. A few cqs on 20m brought in Dennis K3NVI in Pennsylvania and Fred K4KIX near Atlanta. All the while I watched seals come up for air and a million purple jellyfish sailing in on the tide.

On my car trip back to Oregon I followed the coast and kept an eye out for likely places to operate. I found a good one in Humboldt Lagoons State Park, close to Redwood National Park. California provides signs that say “Coastal Access,” and this makes it easier to pull off the highway safely, find a place to park, and get to the beach. I hiked about a mile down a big lagoon, wired up my pole as a quarter wave vertical again, and tied it to an improvised stake about a foot away from the water. This time I was on a sandy beach looking east across a mile of saltwater. I could tell by all the signals I could hear on 20m that I was in for a busy afternoon of operating. It was about 65 degrees and sunny so I rubbed on the sunscreen.

I heard a cq from Trev K6ESE / P so I gave him a call portable to portable. He was camping in Joshua Tree National Park and testing a new homebrew transceiver. Later I got a call from KH6RW; I thought I was working DX, but Steve turned out to be another Arizonan. When I told him I was operating while lying down on the warm sand, he told me how much he missed the beaches in Hawaii.

Later in the afternoon I moved down the shore so I would get a more northern take-off across the lagoon. Sure enough, my cq was answered by the strong signal of Dean KL7GI at his cabin near Juneau and then by Greg VE3NXB in Red Bay, Ontario. Greg said I was dead center for his half-square and copy was easy. My last qso from the lagoon was Dan N7VE in Phoenix who was a friend of Trev and trying to link up with him. I told him to keep trying.

Some beachcombers and a kayaker wanted to know what I was doing so I got a chance to promote ham radio. Several years ago I was operating on a beach in British Columbia when a boy walked up and asked me if I was listening to the whales. At first I thought this was just funny. Later I realized it was more probable than what I was really doing.
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Bill Vanderheide, N7OU, is an avid outdoorsman and QRPer living in Lake Oswego, OR.