So today was a good day for POTA. I did some small work related items, grabbed the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 and headed to Cloudland to get an activation in before lunch. Before I even setup on frequency I was dial-ing around on 17 meters to check the band and found G3VBS calling CQ with no takers! So I figure, why not see if he can hear me… turns out 20 watts was plenty to make a contact with England and we had a great chat for quite a few minutes with only a little QSB.
Today I setup at the frisbee golf course parking area as it is the highest part of the park as well as the quietest RF wise. The lower lot has a nicer view but with the proximity to the campground and so many more people in general, it tends to be noisy comparatively.
Something else I like about the upper lot is I can either deploy the setup in the photo above or I can string a wire in a tree as well. Rigging the hamsticks in the lower lot is more difficult to say the least. So I was a little worried about the impending rain that was on the radar, I normally use the setup you see as I can sit in the truck and operate even in the rain. This is really nice as even inclement weather cant stop my POTA activations! Haha.
Well sure enough when I got home, it started raining so I made a good call here.
I did setup on the bed cover though, which is a little exposed but I figured I could move it into the truck pretty fast should it start to rain.
Today’s radio is the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 which is a wonderful little portable HF transceiver. It is larger than the TR-35 but it also has multiple modes and has every HF band available as well. Today I started on 17 meters because… why not? And that is where I heard G3VBS. I figured I would secure the activation with ease after having a great QSO with the UK. I couldn’t have been further from the truth. I only made one more contact on 17 before giving up and moving to 20 meters. Once on 20 meters things started to pick up for me.
There were a couple of pretty strong pile ups at times and it was fairly difficult to dig out a sinlge call. Mainly because most of the stations were zero beat with me. This makes all the signals turn into one large tone and I get garbled info. Luckily, I have learned a couple of tricks around this and can work with most people now. I will simple call W? Or if I get part of a Canadian call, VE? You get the point. This is a tried and true trick of pile up runners (did I just make up a new term? LOL) around the world. When you cant make out anything, just ask for the most common prefix you know and someone will reply. It worked well for me today as I was able to break apart the pile up and get every one into the log that I could hear. I even worked 4 or 5 stations after calling QRT as they were asking and I had time. I ended up with 36 QSOs toward my day as I had one dupe so it was a great day for POTA. If you want to know more about POTA just give it a google search and head over to their website. Until later, 73 de WK4DS