In 2023, #TeamTopLeft discovered Parks on the Air’s rover award certificates, that award amateurs for activating more than one park entity in the same day. We didn’t realize they existed until we received a Warthog Award for activating 5 parks in a day.
In April 2024, we decided to attempt the first Ostrich Award ever earned on Vancouver Island by activating 20 park entities in a single day (24 hours from 0:00 to 23:59 UTC). Spoiler Alert – we did it. Why? Because talk is cheap, but awards are forever.
The award is for a UTC day, not a rolling 24 hours. So, living in the Pacific Timezone, we needed to start and end by 5:00PM, local time. Our strategy was to be set up and ready to call our first QSO at exactly 5:00PM – get the contacts we needed, then scramble to the next site – wash, rinse, repeat.
We launched our voyage close to home, starting at Shoal Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary (CA-4079) in Sidney. We drove up a few minutes to SMONEĆTEN Campground, which is a section of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve (CA-0031) that is actually on the Saanich Peninsula. From there, we headed down the peninsula to Mount Newton, which sits atop Lau-Welnew/John Dean Provincial Park (CA-3641). That is an easy drive-up POTA, and a SOTA if you get out and walk a bit to the summit. From there, we parked at Gowlland Tod Provincial Park (CA-3225).
We ate lunch on the road and hit Mount Douglas Park (CA-3688), then had to dismount to get to the water for Ten Mile Point Ecological Reserve (CA-4191).
We pushed back inland for Mount Tolmie Park (CA-5667) and then back down to the water for Uplands Park Natural Area (CA-5539). The site was the first of our two-fers, also counting as the Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary (CA-4258).
Seeing as the UTC day is divided between two days out on the West Coast, our goal was to tackle the Saanich Peninsula on the first half, get some sleep, then push out on the west side of the south island for “day two.”
The first half of our trip was pretty successful. We mounted our antenna to the back of the pickup truck and were able to keep the setup and tear down to less than five minutes per stop.
When we arrived at a new park, Matt hopped on 20M FT8 while Shoey called CQ from his VHF handheld. We tried to take photos, but we were too worried about making good time, so we only stopped at a few places for photos or selfies. As the night went on, we switched to 40M.
We headed down to the Mile Zero Marker, at the base of Beacon Hill Park (CA-5540). The spot merges three POTA entities; Beacon Hill, Victoria Harbour, and the Trans Canada Trail (CA-5082). A great spot to pick up some coastal QSOs, and load up on parks (even if the harbour was a dupe).
For our last park before bed, we headed home to double back and catch Elk/Beaver Lake Regional Park (CA-5668) – a difficult activation that took way longer than others as we tried to work magic on 40M with our compromise vertical antenna.
After a few hours sleep, we hit the road again and headed south so we could catch the highway north to Bamberton Park (CA-0702). From there we hit Spectacle Lake Park (CA-4130), an one of the personal ATNOs for us that made this trip twice as fun.
But after Spectacle Lake came Goldstream Park (CA-0724), a personal nemesis of Matt’s, who has tried this park on more than one occassion without success. The park itself is at the base of a long and large canyon, which makes signals painfully difficult. This time, we tried a different section of the park, and the bands were good to us, getting us out of the park in around a half hour, thanks to a quick 2M FM QSO and some FT8.
We were originally going to try for Sooke Mountain, but realized it was too far of a hike. We made the push out west to Sooke Potholes Provincial Park (CA-3239) instead. From there, it was down winding roads to East Sooke Regional Park (CA-3212). Unlike the dreaded Goldstream, this activation did take extra time. East Sooke ate up more than an hour, and forced us to try different bands, different modes, and lots of cursing. We managed to score a VHF QSO and an FT4 QSO to help get us to ten and outta there. Last stop in Sooke was Matheson Lake Regional Park (CA-3229) before we headed back to civilization.
Our last five parks would come from two physical sites, giving us a total of 21 park entities, which was some insurance in case one of the QSOs busted when we got home and checked the logs.
Our first stop on the final leg was a favorite of ours, the Hatley Park National Historic Site (CA-5326) waterfront, which doubles as the Esquimalt Lagoon Migratory Bird Sanctuary (CA-3487).
The final stop was Fort Rodd Hill National Historical Site (CA-4789), which is home to the Fisgard Lighthouse National Historical Site (CA-4787). By this point, we were pretty tired, but excited to have made it to the final stop with time to spare. Our goal was to spill out of the truck, sit down, set up, spin the dial, and call CQ for a classic SSB activation to celebrate our achievement.
In the end, we were able to activate all the parks we needed for our Ostrich Activator award, which we believe is the first obtained on Vancouver Island. It was a long slog, and sadistically, it only got us thinking about getting the further achievements for Leopard (25 parks) and Lion (30 parks).
In the meantime, it’s kind of dumb that getting the Ostrich does not award you for the included activator awards (Warthog 5 / Rhino 10 / Cheetah 15). I had assumed it would, Shoey assumed it would not – and unfortunately he was right.
We don’t know if a Vancouver Island Lion award is feasible right now, given the park density. It seems doable in the Lower Mainland, and we know there are places in the US where it is definitely possible. We will have to study up to see what is possible, and find some time to make a new run.
If chasing parks and getting on the air sounds like fun and you’d like to join us on an adventure, drop us a line: VA7USD + VA7FC.
