No Joy in Yosemite National Park

This past weekend I took a short trip to Yosemite National Park. I brought my 2m radio (Yaesu VX-8R) and programmed it with the local repeaters and simplex frequencies. As I went hiking (and biking) around the Valley I mainly stayed on the 2m calling frequency (146.52) with a few trips over to W6BXN repeater. I’m sad to say I heard no traffic at all over the entire weekend. I couldn’t hit the repeater using my handheld from the valley floor or when hiking on the peaks. On simplex I never heard any other callers and never got a call back from any requests on .52.

On the attached map I placed a star for each location I tried calling on 2m simplex or attempting to get into the W6BXN repeater.  Next time I go I’ll try with a mag mount or j-pole but this trip didn’t leave much time for experimenting.

I try to always have .52 on when I am hiking but have only once heard anyone calling and that was during the Great Solar Eclipse driving chaos in Idaho! It’s quite possible that an HT just doesn’t have a good enough antenna to send and receive well enough (esp in the Valley or Forest) but I strongly encourage all hams to get in the habit of monitoring it.