After salivating over these for almost a year, I bit the bullet.  Go check these out at www.buddipole.com/portablepower.html  I bought the rapid charger and Anderson Power Poles at Pacificon but Chris and Budd were already out of the 4S4P packs, so I ordered them in early November, with plans to work portable at Piedras Blancas over the Christmas holiday.  Family circumstances canceled those plans, so I'm hoping to get the PowerPole connectors on the other bits and give the batteries a go from the nearby mountains this last week of vacation.  Otherwise, it may be spring break before I get time to get out of the house again, and that might be a little iffy then as well. Anyway, the batteries are nanophosphate, and they are TINY, about the size of  12 C batteries arranged in a brick, and the "big" pack is something like two pounds.  Considering I'm used to hauling a 55 Ah Optima Blue Top around, this is fine business indeed.

At Pacificon, I had the chance to talk to Alan Biocca, WB6ZQZ, about the batteries, as well as a couple other BP guys, and they raved about them.  Apparently this style of battery has been used by RC airplane guys; they have a big battery in their trucks that they use to charge the little packs, so that's my plan as well: use an Optima connected by PowerPoles to the quick charger to recharge the battery pack.  They are not cheap items, but they are long lasting; the guys I talked to have used theirs  since BP came out with the packs and have noticed no dip in performance.  The next evolution of it would be attaching a solar panel to it, but that's down the road as well.

A few of us tossed around going to the coast for California QSO Party, but it ended up being the Point Arena crew again, with the part-time addition of W6DIA, who operated mobile from Morro Bay area. It ended up being a low-key operation.  N6EY had a twenty-foot collapsible flagpole as a mast and a new speaker-wire dipole he had made for QRP, and I set up the Buddipole because it was convenient.  We were staying at the Silver Surf Motel because dogs were allowed there, and we set up operation at a picnic table in the grassy courtyard.  We had a few curious glances and some questions, but we probably talked more about our dogs than radio to passers-by (there were quite a few people vacationing with their pooches).

We didn't get set up until around noon on Saturday, as we had driven over after work on Friday, and Jason and I had gone on the lighthouse tour in the morning. The weather was beautiful, the dogs were amiable--what could be better?  I had a bad barrel connector between my Buddipole coax and an extra length of coax, so I had some difficulty getting the SWR into range, and even after that, the antenna seemed mute.  Swapping out the barrel connector seemed to do the trick, and I worked mostly California stations on 40m until it was about time for dinner.  We had to break down the antennas there, though, so the guys wouldn't be a hazard, and I was a little too tired to set it up again when we got back, so it wasn't a stellar effort.  Probably the most fun was had by the dogs on the beach the next morning!

The first mistake I made was wanting to take Highway 1 all the way home.  I'd never been all the way down it to San Francisco--for good reason.  It is slow, torturous, and very high up on the cliffs.  Not to mention that most tourists do not know how to drive it properly.  However, from Highway 1, I did spot a sign that said Point Reyes.  And another sign that said Lighthouse, with an arrow.

In my own defense, I must point out that at that point there was no indication of how far the Point Reyes Lighthouse was, or that the lighthouse and the town were at least twenty miles apart.  I saw the sign for the lighthouse, and as we were right by the ocean, I figured it couldn't be far, so I hooked a turn down a road.

A few miles into the side trip, I saw a sign that said specifically Point Reyes Lighthouse 20 miles. Heck, twenty miles?  About a half hour, right?  Twenty miles through slow rolling hills, close to an hour later, we were finally at the parking lot.  The visitor's center was a half mile up and down a hill. The actual lighthouse was another 300 steps down.

My fledgling thought of getting in another activation evaporated.  We made the hike to the visitor's center, I took a picture of the lighthouse below, and we hiked back to our car and stared unwinding the side trip.  Jan was amazingly mellow about the whole thing, but he did make me promise to Google next time before making a lighthouse side trip.

A group of hams activates Point Reyes from time to time, but they must have special access to haul their stuff in and down.  I'd still like to tour the station and maybe work portable for a couple hours there, but that will be an all-day adventure, not a couple hours at the end of a long trip.

Despite extensive research and planning, there are always surprises during a portable operation, and this one was no different.  Jan and I had been to the Ft. Bragg area years ago on a motorcycle trip and I had actually dragged him off the highway to go see the lighthouse when we were returning home--something that I had forgotten until we were finally on the long, winding and somehow familiar road leading to the lighthouse at the end of the day.  (See the attachments for photos comparing the two.) But before that, we had a nearly eight-hour drive, much of it through heavy summer traffic, although we had planned for six, according to MapQuest.

We had rented one of the vacation homes on the light station; there are four available, renovated USCG duplexes that are very nice and a good value for the money.  We arrived after the station had closed for the day, so we let ourselves in, per instructions, and found the key to our unit in the office's late check-in box. There were a couple other cars on site, but immediately there was a sense of isolation on the point.

It was dark, cold, and becoming foggy by the time we had all arrived and unloaded the gear, so the first night was pizza in town and getting settled.  It was so dark and foggy coming back that Jan and I took the wrong slanting road and got a little lost in Point Arena before backtracking.  At the light station, the crash of the waves was audible from the front door, and little else; it was also pitch black except for the porch lights and the utility lights at the end by the tower itself, which was fenced off from the rest of the compound.  An active aid to navigation, its replacement beacon flashed steadily from the gallery railing, its light seeming tiny in the thickening fog.

I was the first one up, in part because the house was so silent.  It was well built and secure against the wind that was blowing hard from the sea.  After making coffee, I set out to explore in a mist that was quickly turning liquid; my glasses and camera lens were streaming by the time I made a partial circuit.  It was also freezing despite two layers of fleece. 

After breakfast, we surveyed and set up the antenna.  We had limited access to guying points as this was a fully-occupied vacation rental business, and our first rule of portable operation is always to cause NO problems.  Consequently, we didn't set up the beam because of the wind, instead pushing the mast up to about twenty feet and securing the dipole to its top. N6EY thoroughly lashed the mast to a convenient picnic table on our outside patio; if the mast went over, the table was going too!  He found a plant hanger hook on the underside of the eave to provide another guying point.  The long leg of the dipole was tossed over a tree branch and its rope tied to the trunk, while the short leg was attached to a painter's pole that was stabilized by a tiki torch stand driven into the ground with tent stakes; two short rope guys provided additional tension.

For his QRP station, Jason used a collapsible flag pole and guyed it and the 20m/40m inverted Vee in a convenient spot.  We had to make sure that the guys did not block any pathways and were easily visible to anyone wandering by; that's why I usually use blue rope.

The coax for both stations went through the slightly open kitchen window, which conveniently lacked a screen.  There wasn't much of a draft, but a towel could have been tucked in the gap if there had.  The coax was coiled into the kitchen and operating positions were set up on the kitchen table. Warm, dry, windless--this was the most comfortable portable operation we had ever done!

I made a few SSB contacts to check the antenna, then left Jan to play while Jason's significant other, Kris,  and I made a store run.  The boys and Jason's daughter Courtney were all happily geeking away at the table when we left.

After lunch, contacts were a bit sparse because of propagation, or lack thereof, and so we wandered the station, which now had sunshine.  There were quite a few perks about staying on site: free run of the fenced areas (the fence kept people back from the crumbling cliffsides), tours of the tower and museum, and, for us, the ability to leave our antennas up all weekend!  Kris and Jan opted to not do the tower climb, but Jason and his daughters and I did, and it was well worth the view.  We also enjoyed the museum displays.  It's a really well-done non-profit venture, and their preservation efforts are ambitious.  The next week, the tower was finally painted; the work was paid for entirely through donations.

Jason and I made some PSK contacts, trading off with antennas, until it was time to clear the table for dinner.  This was not a "contest," simply an "event" we were participating in, and it seemed like it was not as well publicized as in years past; we heard few other lighthouses on the air, and each contact we made was wondering what we were doing at Point Arena.

I went out with a flashlight for a little while after an excellent tri-tip dinner prepared by Jason and Kris.  Fog was already rolling in, and it was absolutely pitch black beyond the edge of the flashlight beam. The northern coast is different than the central coast, which is where we usually go; summers typically are milder and warmer, the cliffs less rugged, the beach sand finer.  One look past the seaward fence at the crashing waves and dark jutting rocks reveals the need for a lighthouse along this stretch of coast with its treacherous conditions.

In contrast, the living room of our house was warm and light, the pot-bellied wood stove ticking and crackling, with a spirited Uno game in progress when I returned.

We geeks had our phones going at various times, although cell reception was iffy in spots, and free wifi was available.  There was also cable--but the television was quaintly tiny, perhaps nineteen inches.  There were several books and magazines, some in different languages--German, French, Spanish--and some board games as well; delightfully low-tech despite the easy access to email.

The next morning, after a hearty breakfast of biscuits and gravy, Jason and Kris and the girls reluctantly departed as he had to work on Monday.  They made a trip to the beach so that the girls could see the difference between the north coast and the Florida waters of their home before heading back to Fresno.  Other guests were coming and going, as well as a steady stream of tourists in the early afternoon. 

We set up our gear again, and Jan had a couple good runs on SSB before we swapped off and I ran PSK for awhile, then switched to voice.  We worked about five hours, off and on, a good portion of that time calling CQ, but also having some nice little ragchews as well.  It was a very relaxed operation, with about seventy contacts overall.  Activity dropped off around six, so I took a walk to take pictures.  By then, everyone else had departed--tourists, volunteers, even other guests--and for awhile Jan and I were the only two on the light station, which was rather exhilarating.   Fog was rolling in already, softening the early evening light, which made for great photographs.  I did feel a little anxious, though, all the way out on the point behind the houses, with the fog too thick to see through and huge waves crashing at the foot of the cliffs, with the realization that I might be the only person for miles around there at that time of day, with the exception of Jan.  How isolated those first lighthouse keepers must have felt at times, particularly with weather closing in around them.

My last SSB contact was to an airline pilot en route from San Francisco to Vancouver--my first aeronautical mobile. 

Monday morning, I tried a few CQ's but there were few people on, so we dropped the mast and packed the gear and headed for home.  I took one more trip up into the tower for a last look and a couple more pictures, and then we were on our way back to the Valley.

And at that point I made a series of errors that resulted in a twelve-hour drive instead of a seven-hour one.  And for that, I can only plead...lighthouse madness!

We participated as part of the San Joaquin Valley Amateur Radio Society's 3A effort, but it was the first real field test of the YP-3 Yagi in a bag.  I had set it up and tested it in the backyard with good results, but I had not had sufficient time to play prior to Field Day.  It had a much more effective range, I am sure, mounted about forty feet in the air on a portable tower provided by our friend W6TE, and 20m was picked through pretty consistently during the twenty-four hour period.  Although we had the stations separated as much as we could within the constraints of terrain and the ARRL rules, we had a good bit of interference between SSB and CW--more than anticipated considering the beam and the dipole were set at nearly right angles as well.  W6TE fabricated some coax filters, which did help.

We did a little walking around the lake and grounds today--not quite hiking because there's too much snow!--and generally relaxed.  It's amazing how relaxing an environment can be when there's no cell phone, no phone, no TV.  We got about an hour and a half of operating time in the late afternoon; it was a little windy and cloudy earlier.  Band was not in terrific shape, but we managed seven QSOs together, and almost all of them were ragchews of varying lengths, so it was a satisfying time.  Farthest worked today: New York and New Jersey!  Also Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and  Illinois.

Ironically, we worked NY and NJ right after a pair of sisters came over to see what we were doing in the parking lot.  They were on the tour bus with their parents, and they were originally from NY. 

No PSK today after all, in part because the netbook wasn't charged.  I think I need a new battery for it; it's just not holding a charge the way it should.  Nevertheless, a good time was had by all, and we finished when we started getting cold, dinner was being served, and the Optima battery was just about to die.

For our twentieth anniversary, Jan and I decided to go to Montecito-Sequoia Lodge, which is on the edge of the Sequoia National Park.  We packed "light" for the trip, with the 897D, Buddipole, and one Optima Blue Top battery.  We brought along the homebrew TeePeeVee as a backup.  After a quick recon of the area, we chose a slushy, unmarked corner of the parking lot because it would have little traffic and had some nearby natural supports (trees).  The BP went up on its mast in a dipole configuration in short order, and within about twenty minutes or so, WA6WTF/P was on the air.  For about ten minutes before a nice gust of wind brought the BP crashing down.

I'd guyed it in two places and had been especially careful to guy it on the windward side.  Unfortunately, my slipknot had slipped, and the end result was a truly tremendous bang, one broken whip, and one badly bent.  Jan thought we were off the air, but I always have spare parts, having already been inducted into the Busted Whip Society a few years ago.  Some careful tweaking of the bent whip showed that it was still serviceable, although no longer entirely collapsible.  I adjusted the guying and added a third point just in case, and within fifteen minutes or so, we were operational again.  Just in time for 20m to snap in and out like a worn rubber band and noisy as well.

Jan called CQ for awhile and tried to break in on a couple of ragchews just to get a signal report, to no avail.  We swapped out and I called CQ in a couple of spots with no luck.  Italy was booming in, calling for West Coast, but the guys in the Midwest were so excited that they kept going back to him, and there were a lot of them between me and Italy!  A couple of JAs were having a lengthy chat in Japanese.  Hawaii popped up in a couple of ragchews.  So it was fun listening, at least.  Just when I was going into the stupor that comes with unsuccessfully calling CQ, an operator popped up, followed by two more, and I even got a "great" signal report, 5/9 and 20 over, in Iowa.   Not bad for 100w and a bent whip.  The band was popping in and out, and it was time to pack up for dinner at the lodge, so the score for less than an hour of  "real" operating time was three QSOs. 

Lessons learned: there's a reason for the three-points of the three-point guying system.  And slipknots can be...slippery.

The site is still under construction, so look out for falling objects and the occasional rusty nail.  This is my first attempt at using Google Sites, and so far it's been relatively intuitive. 

I'm looking forward to the DX Convention in Visalia this weekend.  Last year, I saw the YP-3 Yagi in a Bag on its portable tower in the parking lot, which is one reason why I ended up buying one this spring.  I don't have anything on the wish list right now, except for a pack or two of the tiny Buddipole batteries, but I'm sure there will be something amazing at the convention.