WK4DS Amateur Radio Blog
My first POTA 2fer, with a QRP radio, and a Solar Storm!
Today I activated US-0716 (Chickamauga Battlefield) for my first-ever POTA 2fer! Between solar storms, parking challenges, battery failures, and meeting Dan (K2DTS), this activation had it all. Here's what happened when Murphy's Law met a QRP radio during less than ideal conditions!
Today saw the old red Chevrolet transporting my POTA gear over to Chickamauga Battlefield National Military Park which is park number US-0716. I have activated this park many times in the past, but unbeknownst to me was that the location I usually used to activate this park also allows for the activation of the Trail of Tears National Trail as well as it follows old HWY 27 right through the park! I have been activating a 2fer for years now and had no idea…live and learn.
This “parking lot” has only 2 spaces in it, but it is close enough in proximity to the main road to allow for a 2fer when activating POTA
I arrived on station to find that only one spot was available and no one around the truck. This matters as Dan (K2DTS) had mentioned dropping by to see the CW setup and to observe a CW activation for a little while. Turns out the car in the other space was not him. He would arrive later, which was a much needed “shot in the arm” to lift my spirits. You see, today was one of those days when the sun was really angry while I was setup to activate. The solar K index was either 5 or 6 which isn’t good…especially for QRP… My QSO count today was not all that high, but I still had a relaxing and fun time at the park none the less.
This location works well with my truck mounted antenna setup that I built. I used my old reliable hamstick collection today to get on the air and true to form, they worked pretty well. I have also refined my tuning system as well. I will give you the quick rundown on how I do it now. This works especially well with hamsticks as you will soon see.
Hamsticks are a very viable antenna system for POTA activators. They are easy to setup and work reasonably well for their tiny size. They usually have good power handling so digital modes like FT8 and even good ole CW are not a problem for them. Of course SSB is always fine if they can handle CW…
My Hamstick Antenna System and Color Coding Setup
Above is my modest hamstick collection to date. This is the 5 bands I use the most and I wished I also had the 10 meter version as well…but I digress. It is a good idea to do something to tell them apart. The labels are not very durable from what i have seen and so I chose to color code mine with various colors of electrical tape instead. Red - 40meters; Blue - 30 meters; Yellow - 20 meters; Brown - 17 meters; and Green - 15 meters. These are what I have been using for a long time now and they work well. These are made by three different companies too so the brand doesn’t really seem to matter. I have also converted mine over to the QD attachment design so that I can change bands fairly fast…well it is faster than threading them into the socket…haha. I have owned and used this exact setup for quite some time now as you can see from this blog post I wrote a good while back.
I also store them inside a PVC pipe I made into a storage tube. It is almost 8’ long so I can keep the “stingers” on all the base load coils which prevents me from mixing the wrong tip with the wrong load coil. I built this tube steel mount to fit inside the 2” receiver on a pick up truck, this allows for it to do two things at once. 1) It allows the antenna to be setup quickly and easily on any vehicle with a standard receiver mount. 2) I also built it so that it makes the base of the antenna at around 6’ above the ground. Getting the antenna higher does help with take off angle so I made the decision to make it taller than most. This also made it possible to string some radials at various angles so I can play with the impedance by adjusting the radials. If you look close in the lower photo, you can just see the radials connected to the base of the mount and running down out of the frame. These were tuned for 17 meters like this and they worked incredibly well in this configuration. When you only have a few watts like with the Penntek TR-35, you need all the help you can get…haha.
17 meter hamstick deployed during a POTA activation for CW and FT8 use. You can also see the highway in the background that is designated the Trail of Tears trail as well.
I setup in the passenger seat again, but to be honest, this was not ideal. I struggled to get all the stuff connected and stationary today. I also had a problem with the battery in the little power pack I had built…it was completely dead for some reason. I had used it recently but I didn’t think I had tanked it, anyway, not to be dissuaded I decided to get out the 8Ah battery and find a spot for it as well so I could power the station. You see, I needed the “power pack” so I would have a speaker. I figured that since Dan was going to drop by and hand out some, that I would make it to where he could hear the CW as well. This setup finally settled in and I was able to get on the air. This is when I figured out that the sun was angry…
I looked on the POTA spot page to look for a clear spot and there was only one other ham on the spot page, on 20 meters, in the middle of the day… Do you understand what this means? 20 meters is literally the honey pot of the HF bands when it comes to POTA. There is literally 2 dozen CW ops at times on this band and then there will be 2 on 17 meters. It will be that drastic and today there was me and one other guy in the Carolinas and that was it. Optimistic that I could at least get my ten in short order, I fired up the radio, dialed through the literal ghost town that was 20 meters and settled on a frequency around 14.063mhz and started calling CQ. It took about an hour to get my ten plus a few more, but I finally got them. In an attempt to get some stations I could hear in the noise, I even switch to headphones as you can hear MUCH weaker signals if you goto headphones over the external speaker that I am using. This trick didn’t work either as it turns out, that there has to be stations on the air for you to actually hear them… I had seemingly forgotten this minor detail on this day…lol.
POTA CW station ready for use, including the Penntek TR-35, home brew S meter and battery pack/ speaker combo unit. Also the Gemini travel CW key and the Dell Inspiron computer with HAMRS for logging.
CQ Ham Radio - Gemini travel CW key is really well designed and cost effective. This is one of my favorite CW keys when I dont have a surface to set the Begali Traveler on.
The Gemini CW Key: A Collapsible Treasure from eBay
Let me introduce you to one of my favorite travel CW keys that I use for POTA operations. This is a key I bought off of eBay initially and as of this writing, it seems to be the only place to get one of these keys now. Maybe an opportunity for a creative solution here… lol. Anyway, these are darling little keys that work beautifully and I always enjoy getting this one out. As you can see below, the reason I like this key is how it stows the handles when not used. You simply loosen the screw on top a little, slide the screw to the rear and this collapses the paddles inside the housing which protects the from damage when stored in less than ideal conditions. This key also is dead simple, lacking any sort of adjustments at all, you just plug it into the radio and use it. I like that to be honest…
GHD CW Key for portable CW operations like POTA.
Operating QRP During a Solar Storm (And Why 20 Meters Was a Ghost Town!)
So after I struggled around for a little over an hour to put 15 calls in the log…well…14 since one was a dupe… (duplicate calls on the same band, park, day and mode dont count to your POTA score)…I decided to put up the headphones and get out the HF Signals sBitx and work some FT-8 on 17 meters. I had not seen Dan so I figured the honey-do list got him or something and put away the CW gear while FT-8 hummed along in the background.
A lot of times, I will run FT-8 while I do house keeping chores like putting up radio gear from a different mode that I had just finished using or talking to the wife on the phone about what she wants me to do next after I finish playing radio… you get the idea. I can do some other things while keeping an eye on the display and letting it run in auto mode for a while. Well, not today buckaroo, seems the band were so bad that I couldn’t get auto to work today very well. I called CQ for a while to no avail. I finally started hunting other stations can answering their CQ instead. Switching to this tactic netted me 5 more contacts before I closed out the log for the day. 18 valid QSOs will do just fine…actually, 36 since I activated the 2fer today!
If you will notice the waterfall in the photo below, you will see that there really were not that many stations on the FT-8 segment…which is usually choked pretty tight with stations. The bands were just that bad. Even with these terrible conditions, I was still able to get 5 calls in the log for today on FT-8!
sBitx by HF Signals is a SDR powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 or Pi 5 SBC and does all sorts of things a regular radio can not do.
Meeting Dan (K2DTS) and the Ham Radio Community
While I was taking some of these photos and cleaning up the unneeded ham gear after switching to FT-8, look who stopped by to say hi and see the station! Dan (K2DTS)! He missed my CW portion of the activation and instead of setting it all back up, I did show -n- tell with him about all the gear I had brought to the activation. You have to understand that this is fairly substantial…haha. We talked for probably 20 minutes or maybe even a little longer about all sorts of things and had a great eye-ball QSO. I hope we can link up again at some point so I can get him on the air with CW so he can make some contacts too.
Ham radio is a wonderful community that has a large number of great people like Dan (K2DTS) who came out to the activation site today to see the setup.
Some days you don’t have to make a ton of contacts (although this never hurts…haha) to have a good time. Any day at a park with a radio is better than your best day at work. Knowing this I will always choose POTA over going to work… lol. Thanks for coming along today and I hope to work you on the air soon!
72
David - WK4DS
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Over 100 QSOs at Chito Branch US-5524 POTA Activation AAR
Once on 15 meters with a warm radio, I set off with calling CQ on a clear frequency. I called for maybe two or three minutes before I started getting replies…and then I got more, and more, and more till I had a genuine pileup on 15 meters! There was times when I am sure I could hear at least ten stations calling at once and this happened a coupe of times today!
Today saw me working on my kilo at Chito Branch again. I figured I would net 30, maybe 40, contacts considering the band conditions and the problems I was running into, but nothing prepared me for what happened today…
The Antenna and Radio Setup
I arrived at the park after hitting a pretty heavy traffic jam this morning a little frustrated since I am attempting to secure the kilo before we leave town for the rest of the year. I get to the park and there is not a single person on site other than me, which gives me the pick of the litter of locations. I immediately go about setting up the antenna and tuning it.
I also noticed today something about the antenna that was of interest to me. I will be investigating it further and writing about it soon. It is that the characteristic impedance of the vertical can not be made purely 50 ohms without a reactive component at all. It simply doesnt work. I testing it for a few minutes as I was curious and as I would tinker with the vertical and the radials to move the plot to purely resistive, it would move the frequency of the antenna off at the same time (stands to reason) but I couldn’t get it to a nice clean 50 ohms no matter what I did. I tinkered with it and the radials till I got the null on frequency and the SWR as low as feasible and moved on to the radio.
After I finished setting up the antenna, I chose to use the TenTec Scout 555 amateur radio and only pulled the 15 and 20 meter band modules for today’s activity. I wanted QSOs in the log and not exotic bands today… I had made a mistake last night though, this radio is temperature sensitive to some degree, it will drift in frequency (mine wanders slowly up) till it warms up from use. So when I am running the keyer and the radio is in transmit a lot calling CQ, the radio heats up in the back and slowly that heat creeps forward in the case to warm the rest of the electronics. Once warm I find the radio to be very stable and work exceeding well, but until it does, I have to watch it and turn the VFO down a little at a time till it is warm. This is what I had to deal with today
The POTA Activation Begins…
People were sending me notes in the spots on the POTA website about my frequency so I would know about the drift. I love how the hunters are there for you all the time, even once they have you in the log. That is awesome camaraderie if I must say so. I racked up a staggering 35 QSOs in short order! It was going so well that I figured I would hop onto 15 meters and see if I could get 40 or 45 before I ran out of time… What happened next blew my mind. After I worked those 35 stations it is like the radio simply turned off, I don’t know if I had worked everyone on the band or if the band had started to close, but I could no longer hear anyone calling. So I called CQ a couple more times and finally after not hearing anyone else for a coupe of cycles, decided to QSY to 15 meters.
The ¼ wave telescoping vertical antenna was simple and effective today.
TenTec Scout 555 Amateur Transceiver with Begali Travler CW Key
15 Meters Gets Sporty!
Once on 15 meters with a warm radio, I set off with calling CQ on a clear frequency. I called for maybe two or three minutes before I started getting replies…and then I got more, and more, and more till I had a genuine pileup on 15 meters! There was times when I am sure I could hear at least ten stations calling at once and this happened a coupe of times today! I also knew from prior experience that 15 meter is kinda where I start really hearing DX stations when the band is in good shape so I was kinda listening for stations with callsigns that start with letters other than A,K,N and W. I have found that after doing POTA for a while that my brain instinctively listens for one of those letters first in the call. If I don’t hear one of those 4 at the beginning then something in my brain trips and I only get the last 2 or 3 letters of the callsign and require a repeat…unless…I am on 15 meters and above.
It is really rare for me to even hear DX with the antennas I use for POTA until I get up to 21 mhz or higher. To be honest, I am surprised I hear them at all with some of the antenna designs I use. The ¼ wave vertical pictured above is a prime example, I am pretty sure this antenna needs to be a good bit higher in the air for a good DX take off angle, but here we are….
Here is the list of the DX I worked today from a POTA park:
DX Countries Worked:
Working DX on simple antennas is one of the joys of amateur radio. The ARRL's guide to HF propagation explains why 15 meters can be so productive for European contacts from the US.
Venezuela - YV1GIY
England - G0LLU, G3NKQ
France - F6CAX, F6OYU
Spain - EA4MZ
Belgium - ON5JT, ON4ZD
Czech Republic - OK1MGW, OK1XC
Germany - DF2PI
Cape Verde - D4HP
Belarus - EW6GB
Russia - R1QBD/3
Israel - 4Z4DX
China - SH2NR
I use HAMRS for my POTA logging.
AAR POTA Wrap Up
As you can see, I was hearing people from all over the world! I couldn’t believe some of the ones on this list. I don’t think I have ever worked Cape Verde before! He was really weak too, I could just make out the call and signal report after him repeating it a few times, but we got it done! Europe would come booming in with spurts of band openings apparently as I would work two or three at one time then it would go silent in the EU for a while then it would happen again.
Now this is not to say the band was in perfect condition. There was considerable QSB (fading) of the signals today, but it was manageable with a decent set of headphones and a properly adjusted radio. I could hear all but maybe 3 stations that I could hear at all. Of those three, one of them I almost got but then it faded out completely. I was so close too… Anyway, the calls just kept coming in and over the next hour I hit 50 then 60 then 70 and the log just kept building. I use HAMRS for my POTA logging and it shows the total in the top corner like a little scoreboard...
I finally got to something like 78 and had a couple of duplicate calls by now so I wanted to finish with a solid 80 and started really working towards this new little goal I had thrown up. Then I did it and then ran right past 80 to almost 90! It just kept happening! 15 meters was on fire today! I finally got to about 98 and I was almost out of time so I decided to stop at 100 even if I didn’t account for the duplicates. 98 is better than being late for picking up the XYL (the wife)… haha. But then I hit a little run of 5 and landed finally on 103 and the goal being reached, I called QRT and powered off the station. This is what I love about POTA, the callers were coming in from everywhere.!
Screen capture from the HAMRS logging software QSO map.
This map blows my mind, all of those calls were worked on a 30 year old, 40 watt TenTec Scout 555 radio (I turned the power down from factory spec for a reason)that has to warm up to stay on frequency, with an “outdated” mode that appears to be very NOT outdated at all, with a less than ideal antenna! So with all this I have to say, just get something together and don’t worry too much about if it has perfect SWR or if the antenna is “high enough” for DX, obviously that don’t matter when the band conditions get right! Now of note, most of the DX (I think almost all of it other than Venezuela, is 15 meters only) also all of the west coast if 15 meters as well as several of the ones due north of my position.
Elated at the fact that I had put over 100 calls in the log toward my kilo, I hurriedly broke down the antenna and packed the radio away and drove off to get the wife from school. Now if I can just repeat this again tomorrow…haha.
How many watts does the Ten-Tec Scout 555 output? The Ten-Tec Scout 555 outputs 50 watts from the factory, I have mine “turned down” to 40 watts as this is a simple adjustment and helps protect the radio from high SWR issues in the field, which is more than adequate for POTA activations and working DX on CW. Despite being a 30-year-old radio, it performed exceptionally well during this activation and many others in the past.
What bands work best for DX during POTA activations? 15 meters (21 MHz) and above typically offer the best DX opportunities during POTA activations (for me at least). At US-5524, nearly all European DX was worked on 15 meters, while 20 meters provided primarily US contacts.
Do you need a perfect antenna for POTA DX contacts? No - this activation proved that DX is possible with simple antennas. Using a basic quarter-wave vertical with radials at ground level, I worked 12 countries across Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia…in one sitting.
Why does the Ten-Tec Scout 555 drift in frequency? The Scout 555 is temperature-sensitive and drifts slightly as it warms up during transmit cycles. Once warm (after 15-20 minutes of operation), it becomes very stable. Simply adjust the VFO slightly downward as it warms. The radio drifts in frequency due to component value changes as they warm up, this is common in older equipment or less sophisticated designs like the Scout 555. Things like crystals will change frequency when they get warm, other things like capacitors will also change value with temperature if they are not specifically stabilized versus temperature.
What is the best logging software for POTA activations? HAMRS is excellent for POTA logging - it's free, works offline, handles POTA references automatically, and generates helpful QSO maps. It also exports to ADIF format for easy upload to pota.app. Is it the best? For me it is…
Related Posts
Hope you enjoyed this AAR, leave a comment and I look forward to hearing from you in a future one,
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David - WK4DS