Joint POTA Activation with NA2B at Moody Branch: 104 CW Contacts in 4 Hours

Today I had the pleasure of meeting Chas NA2B for our first joint POTA activation at Moody Branch Wildlife Management Area (US-6317) in Florida. What started as a chance encounter on the POTA spot page turned into a memorable 4-hour operating session that netted 104 total CW contacts between our two stations.

Today I went to a POTA park to meet up with Chas NA2B, another amateur radio operator that lives just down the road from Chito Branch nature Reserve where I have been spending a lot of time here lately. He saw I was at the park on the spot page and simply hopped in the car and drove over for an eyeball QSO and to see if I wanted to meet up with him at some point and setup for an activation.

This blog post will be an amalgamation of both discussing the activation as well as my new friend.

Planning the Activation

We communicated a good bit over the past week via text to line up a good day, (turns out every day is a good day for Chas…haha) and chose Tuesday as I had some business to attend to on Wednesday and the weather was way warmer than the previous day. The weather actually turned out to be about perfect to be honest about it. We agreed on Moody Branch US-6317 and 9:30 as the start time. We had planned to operate till about 2 if things were going good so on the day of, I load up the truck and head out. It takes about an hour to get there from where i was staying so I stopped and grabbed coffee and snacks along the way. Who doesn’t want a caffeinated CW op on the other end of their QSO???

When I get there I am greeted with the standard issue Florida DNR signage and to my amazement there is a pavilion for us to operate from! Now to be fair, Chas had told me about it and the proximity to the parking lot. You see it was literally 15 feet from my truck to the table. Having the table this close allowed for an incredible amount of gear to be brought out. HaHa

Chas had already arrived and was setting up in the back of the pavilion so that I could have the closer spot and access to some really good trees to hang my antenna in. I decided to setup the antenna “properly” by putting the antenna tuner at the antenna instead of at the radio. This should provide better radiation than using the tuner to match the feedline as part of the antenna system. I simply set the case on the ground and set the tuner on top of it and tied the antenna wire to the case itself. The distance was about 50 feet from the table so I had to couple both of my longest coax cables together just to reach the tuner out by the tree.

The Setup: Remote Antenna Tuner Configuration

I put the antenna tuner way out here on purpose. The remote tuner setup keeps the feedline from becoming part of the radiator. This is important at it creates a more efficient antenna overall.

Since it was so far from the table, I just left the nanoVNA with the tuner so it would be nearby when I wanted to make band changes, of which there was many!

I strung the wire up like an inverted L type from tree 1 to tree 2 and tuned it for 40 meters to start with. Today I chose to start there as I was wanting to make contacts on all the bands I could with the Penntek TR-35 QRP radio. I also decided at the outset that I would work bands other than 20 meters today to see what I could come up with. I usually seem to have great luck with all the bands…other than 60 meters so far… haha. I also chose to run 10 watts or less all day too…well except for 40 meters, i ran 40 watts on 40 meters and still only made one FT8 contact there… lol. The band was just too noisy for me to hear anyone.

Equipment: QRP vs. Comfort

I only ran 10 watts or less the rest of the day because I didn’t have my large battery with me that I bring to power the sBitx at full power. I only had my 8 Ah battery and I didn’t want to deplete it early. I also had the 3Ah battery for the TR-35 and used it with that radio, but those were the power sources I was constrained to. This made me have to work a little harder for contacts, but it also made it a lot more fun to get DX stations in the lag! I got at least 2 European stations in the log so I know it doesnt take a ton of power to do it.

WK4DS (left) and NA2B (right) running simultaneous CW pileups on different bands at Moody Branch

Once setup I used two radios, the Penntek TR-35 QRP rig and the HF Signals sBitx V3. Both of these radios are cool in their own respect. I like the sBitx because I can run FT8 without needing to also connect a computer to the radio. The sBitx will internally log the contacts too so I could theoretically do an activation then when I get back home, down load the contact list and reformat it in ADIF and send it to the POTA site. That is kinda cool. The Penntek TR-35 is small, light weight and has a great receiver in it as well as awesome filtering. This little radio has everything you need and nothing you dont.

Above is me and Chas running pile ups on two different bands at once! We were both running CW today and at times I struggled to hear as my side tone and his were the same. I solved this by adjusting the side tone up a little so then mine and his were different ever so slightly and I could hear mine easily again. I think Chas stayed on 20 meters the whole time today. He racked up 61 contacts with the simple wire antenna. What a day in the field!

sBitx V3 running FT8 with new color-coded software from the open-source development team

This is what you see with the latest software release from the open source team on Github. This software has been made VERY good by this team of dedicated people and if you want to use this software yourself, just follow this link to JJ’s github page to learn more.

NA2B's minimalist CW station: paper logging, pencils, and a clean operating position

Chas had a really clean operating position today. He had plain pencils, which will ALWAYS work, a pencil sharpener and notebook for log data. He was in a blissful state. I also like the battery pack he has too. If I had brought my 36 Ah battery, I would have brought the Scout 555 out and ran it as well. Maybe forgetting it was a sign that I needed to let that radio rest a little…haha. His station looks so clean though, I was impressed.

My station on the other hand looked like I set off a “ham-grenade” lol… I had the logging computer, the foldable keyboard for the sBitx and the whole Penntek station was just piled in the orange storage case. Along with all that, I also had all sorts of other stuff that isn’t in this photo scattered around the table… It was kinda crazy how much crap I brought out.

Operating Highlights

Chas setup his camera and grabbed this photo of us below for the blog. I like how his station has one box on the table and mine is covered in stuff! HAHA!

I will be honest, it was a lot of fun just hanging out while doing the activation. I do so many of these by myself that I forget that I can have someone with me while I do this.

We didn’t get in a hurry, we just took our time and whatever calls got in the log is what we got. There were a couple of time we both had decent pileups to work through, him more so than me as he had more power and 20 meters typically has more operators on the band. It wasn’t about QSO count…till it was… but all day we just made contacts and played radio.

Right before we finished for the day, I asked Chas how many contacts he had. Chas had 60 calls in the log and I had 38. I told him that we needed to have an even 100 calls between us before we stopped for the day. This total number of QSOs was completely arbitrary, but a cool little milestone none the less so we pushed on for a little longer. We finished the day with 104 total calls in the logs. Win! Chas had 61 as a final count and I ended up with 43! What a day!

Multi-operator POTA setup at the pavilion - note the contrast in station complexity!

After about 4 or 5 hours of fun and games, we decided to break down and head back to our wives to get some lunch. It was a great day and I am glad I made a new friend as well.

Activation Summary:

- Park: Moody Branch WMA (US-6317)

- Operators: WK4DS & NA2B

- Total Contacts: 104 (43 WK4DS + 61 NA2B)

- Mode: Primarily CW, some FT8

- Bands: 40m, 30m, 20m, 17m, 15m

- Radios: Penntek TR-35 (QRP), HF Signals sBitx V3, Yeasu FT-891

- Power: 10 watts or less (QRP), 40w on 40m, 50 watts on 20m

- Antenna: Inverted L wire antenna with remote tuner, (Chas ran a random wire)

- Duration: 4-5 hours

73

WK4DS - David

Multi-Mode POTA Activation: Penntek TR-35 CW & HT FM on 4 Bands at Sitton Gulch [K-2169]

Today I wanted to work an activation but I also wanted to grab a couple more bands as well so I hatched a plan to grab some VHF and UHF bands on FM Simplex if my friend KG4WBI happened to be home.

Today was also cold, which you can not see in the photos, but trust me…it was pretty cold. Since it was so cold, I opted to operate from inside the truck and setup a hamstick on 20 meters (I was being lazy today and didn’t explore the other bands) as I wanted to get the activation completed in about an hour since I had to be in Chattanooga for lunch. The 20 meter band will usually guarantee that to happen for me on CW, so I started there.

I noted in the below photo that the one shorter radial had to be pulled taught and the this is where the counter weight was at that held it in position. This is of little consequence other than I am starting to wonder how much capacitance I am getting at the end of the radial from these stainless steel weights at the end of each radial? They are not connected physically to the conductor but are probably capacitive to it through the wire insulation. I used speaker wire for these radials and it has worked really well over the years. I think the next deployment is going to have a smith chart plot where I take the weight off and just tie it off to a stake of some sort. Maybe a chop stick since there is really no tension on these radials. That way I can see just how much capacitance these weights are adding and I can also see if it is helping or hindering performance.

In these two photos I tried to capture something that was of interest to me, today the 20 meter hamstick seemed to tune much better with one of the radials drooped down to the ground and not outstretched like the other one. The one that is pulled taught is the one that is shorter due to the wire breaking over the years and me twisting it back together by hand so I could use it. With this setup, the nanoVNA said the SWR plot was 1.1:1 and it sounded like it on the air! The stations were booming in! I was getting reports back from many stations of 599 with my little Penntek TR-35 radio too!

Once I got everything setup and tuned, I hopped on 20 meters CW to see what I could scare up. Well that turned out to be a great idea as i quickly had a good pileup going and had great fun working through it.

I made over 20 contacts in short order with the Penntek TR-35 radio in bare bones configuration today so that I could get it up and running faster. This radio is a gem to use like this with a simple set of headphones and I dont mind operating like this one bit. This actually makes it easier for me to hear the calls to be honest about it.

Being cold like it was today, I decided to operate in the truck so I could stay warm and could feel the key in my hand unlike the trip to DeSoto Falls state park recently…lol.

Once I was finished with activating on 20 meters CW, I thought I would try to work my friend KG4WBI who lives a few miles away from this location. I knew he had the ability to work me on all three VHF and UHF bands that my HT can transmit on, so I hopped on my trusty HT and gave him a yell on his repeater the KG4WBI/R 1.25meter machine.

He was, in fact, home and he was more than happy to hop on simplex for a few peer to peer FM QSOs so I could add a few more contacts to the log as well as a couple of new bands as well. In the above photo, I had walked across the parking lot to the building in the background that you can see in the photo above. It is behind the white truck in the antenna photo. This spot gets most of the stuff out of the way so I had the best chance at a contact with a HT. Turns out it worked great on 2 meter and 1.25 meter, but 70cm just would not work from here with all the trees in between us. So I gave up on that band and went back to the truck to pack up and head on to a lunch date I needed to be at.

On my way to the truck I had an epiphany. I could just drive down to the lower lot and walk out to the northern most viewpoint on the canyon edge and it should give me clear enough line of sight to make the contact! I would still be WELL within the park bounds and it was the same UTC day. So I packed up the HF gear and headed down to the canyon rim. Called Roger on the repeater again and informed him of my plan, which he agreed to merrily. So we switched over to simplex again and I put in the 70cm call frequency then called Roger’s callsign and he immediately came back with a 59 signal report! Success!!! 4 bands again!!! Woohoo!

The lower photo is me down by the canyon rim where I made the 70cm contact. Don’t I look happy… lol.

I wanted to share this activation with everyone as it highlights a part of POTA that alot of people overlook. Well, actually two parts… one is that it extends to ALL hambands and the second is that you can absolutely use your HT to make short range contacts on FM and they count just as much as those great distance HF contacts. Dont discount 2 meter SSB either. There is plenty of people there too.

Anyway, it was a great day for radio and I appreciate yall coming along for the ride.