Activating Sierra National Forest (US-4466) from the Edge of Yosemite

Hey folks,

This one had been a long time coming. Our travels finally took us out to California's Sierra Nevada, and I'd booked a cabin at Tenaya Lodge in Fish Camp — right on the doorstep of Yosemite National Park. What I hadn't fully appreciated until I looked at the maps was that the lodge sits inside Sierra National Forest (US-4466), which meant I could activate the forest without ever leaving the cabin. That was my kind of setup.

It was my first-ever visit to both Sierra National Forest and to Yosemite, and the country out there did not disappoint. Towering trees, mountain air, and that unmistakable High Sierra light — I understood pretty quickly why people come back year after year.

The activation itself, though, gave me a run for my money. I got on the air and things just weren't right. Signals were down, the SWR was misbehaving, and I spent a good while chasing my tail trying to figure out what was going on. I fought through it and got the activation in the log, but I left that cabin knowing something in my setup was wrong.

Back home, I finally tracked it down: a defective coax where a PL-259 had developed an intermittent short between the shield and the center pin. It was a nasty little fault — the kind that behaves itself right up until you're set up in the field far from home and need it to work. Finding it was frustrating enough that it turned into a project of its own.

Out of that headache I planned and built a coax tester to make catching this sort of thing far easier next time. It has both PL-259 and BNC connectors on it, plus meter-lead test jacks, so I can plug the cable and my meter straight in, then flex and wiggle the cable while watching the meter for any deflection. An intermittent short that used to take two people — one working the cable, one watching the meter — is now an easy one-man job at the bench. I'll put together a separate write-up on the tester, because I suspect I'm not the only one who's been bitten by a bad connector.

I'll admit to one regret from this trip: with the schedule we were on, I only had time to activate the forest from the cabin and never got the chance to activate Yosemite itself. That just means I have unfinished business out there. Between the scenery, the parks I still want to get on the air, and the pull of the place itself, I will absolutely be back.

73,
Rick / W4IO