APRS Stations near Butano SP (California)
It was 2 weeks ago, I went camping to Butano State Park in Memorial Day weekend.
Butano State Park is located a little south of Half Moon Bay near San Francisco Bay area. It is a small state park and it is really nice and quiet place. It was little chilly early in the morning and late in the evening. However the camp sites were full and there were many people there.
Camping Site
Camping sites are nice. Most of them have nice shade with big Redwood trees. This time we could not get a regular sites that we can park our cars next to the campsite. Our site was a part of "walk-in" site. Even it's called "walk-in" site, the campsites are not so far from the parking lot. It is probably a few hundred feet away from the parking lot. Only problem is there is only one designated parking space near the camp site. A group who has more than one cars, they have to park a little far on the load. That is only bad thing we found out. The regular site typically have two parking space for each site.
Also, there is only one bath room and it is not flash-able. However it is reasonably clean and I do not see a big problem at all.
Hiking Trail
There are a several hiking trail. People can arrange a short hiking to a full day hike depending on their demand. I tried to test APRS with my Baofeng. It does not seems to be a good coverage at all. I did not get any packet and all packets I sent out were not recognized. So it is not good area to use APRS. (I just using Baofang hand-held radio and a better antenna other than the standard antenna.)
Mobile service is partially available near bathroom of a regular camping site, not the one in the walk-in site.
There is no issue to use simplex channels on 2m band during hiking. The distance between two groups might be less than a few miles. I have not tried any repeater from the park.
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