Las Vegas Was a Bust

 I was in Las Vegas for a convention during the first week of May.  Knowing I had some spare time, I planned to head out into the mountains and get Nevada added to my slowly but surely growing list of states activated.  I choose three parks that were nearby and looked suitable enough to activate based on my work schedule.

I took an early Monday morning flight and planned my first activation on the way to check-in at the hotel.  Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Park - US-4443 looked great on paper, just a few miles from my hotel but being in the middle of Las Vegas I knew the noise floor would be a challenge.  What I didn't expect was to find the gates to be locked, and the sign posted that the park was closed on Monday.  Ha!  I had two more parks planned on Thursday morning- the last day of  the  conference.

Thursday came soon enough and I got up early to hit the road. All my gear was properly packed: KX3.  Batteries.  Mic.  Key. Antennas.  All looked good. I consulted the map and briefly considered driving up to Pahrump, home of the late great Art Bell of Coast to Coast fame and also a noted Ham radio operator.  The detour would add 2 hours to my drive time, so I stuck to my original plan.

I headed out to the mountains and stopped at US-7494 Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.   Beautiful views, wide open spaces, hemmed in by mountains.  But the first problem was finding a decent place to activate. I set up and one location and started to activate, but a Park Ranger approached me and said the daily permit was required for overnight camping anywhere in the park.  I told him I was only staying for a few hours and he suggested I drive up the road to an overlook which turned out to be a great idea again on paper.

The next problem was the wind.  The wind was quite high, and kept blowing the AX1 antenna over.  I was using a small mag mount on the roof of the car.  Once I got it fairly secured I called CQ  on both CW and sideband.   After several hours  I had only  managed 7 contacts one of those was a two-fer.

I reluctantly packed up around noon knowing the second park was a bust.  It seems the canyon walls and surrounding mountains were too much for my 5 W QRP signal to overcome.  The third park was located south of the airport and including drive time I would only have about an hour to activate before my flight.  

I arrived at the third park US-8303 Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area.  The parking area was nicely situated on a bluff just south of town. There was a lot of new home and road construction in the area, but the nose floor was not too bad. I spent the next hour calling and hunting park to park but only managed one more contact!  

What I didn't know that solar flare had been in progress all morning, adding to the QRP challenge. The band conditions would continue to deteriorate over the next week which was widely reported in the Ham community. I still had fun and learned a lot.  I uploaded my logs for the two failed activations and wondered if I would’ve had better luck going to Pahrump! 

Maybe an alien encounter, a brush with the CIA, ha ha, we will never know.  

#POTA-ON!

Chris de WX7V