W6C
Santa
Cruz Island
CA012S
June 2006
On June 9-11, 2006, W6WTG, KF6JOQ and KG6ZBL went to Santa Cruz Island for a DXexpedition and using the call of W6C.
Santa
Cruz Island is off of the Ventura Coast and to reach the island you can
hitch a ride with Island Packers for the trip. Santa Cruz is
about 22 miles long and 6 miles wide. The only amenities are porta
potties and a few drinking fountains.
The National Park Service has a few guidelines that we need to follow:
1) Wear headphones all time
2) Only able to transmit from 6 am -10 pm.
3) Only use vertical antennas and under 10 foot.
4) No generators, batteries only
5) A special use permit
Santa
Cruz is by no means the North Pole or any exotic place but it is in our
backyard, so to speak. But yet it is on the top 100 list of rare
islands for the IOTA group. I have received emails from different
individuals in Japan asking to listen for them on 20 meters.
Also
the Grid Square of CM93 is hard to get as that grid is the island. So
for 2 meters and 6 meters CM93 should be busy with contacts as that is
during the VHF contest.
As
of now we plan to take 3 deep cycle batteries, Icom 706 for 6 meters
and 2 meters and a Yeasu 847 for 20 meters. We will be using a 2 meter
loop and a 6 meter loop. We are still working on the HF antennas.
QSL manger is N2OWL. We hope to hear from you during our trip.
