Sometimes it is nice to have a slower day

I recently setup an activation at K-2169 and had no where to be for the rest of the day… This is my kind of POTA activation!

The above photo is a little misleading, there was one other car in the lot, but due to camera angle and me wanting the truck to be in the frame as well as the parking lot it is out of view. But it was essentially empty, so it was really quiet and I didnt even see a park ranger on this day, they normally ride by once or twice while I am setup and sometimes they even stop for a chat. I have been here so much that they know what I am doing and are cool with it. I contribute this to the fact that I am in a corner of the property where there is little to no activity most of the time, I don’t consume more than one parking space with my setup, I stay out of the pavilions (I have used them in the past if they were not being used and had no placard reserving them), my setup doesn’t involve me driving stakes into the ground and I do my best to keep my footprint to a minimum. Since I use CW for the most part, I don’t make very much noise either so it is minimal impact all around. At least that is my perspective and it seems that it is also the park employees perspective as well…or they could just not care about the old codger over there with the little radios…lol.

Today saw me on the 17 meter band with Morse code and it has always been an intriguing experience. The rhythmic sound of the dots and dashes echoing over the airwaves brings a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era while honing my skills in communication and technology. Despite the advancements in digital modes, Morse code offers a unique challenge that is both rewarding and intellectually stimulating. Operating on the 17 meter band allows for reliable long-distance communication, opening up a world of possibilities to connect with fellow enthusiasts from different corners of the globe. (Check the log and you will see what I mean by waxing nostalgic) It's fascinating to see how a simple yet effective mode like Morse code continues to thrive in the modern age of ham radio.

Below is the whole station (minus the S meter I am currently building for it) for the TR-35 HF radio. I have built the “black box” of options to help complete out the radio, the box has a battery pack in it as well as a speaker for the radio since it has no speaker of it’s own and I have added a push button to activate the voltmeter so it doesn’t run constantly and drain said battery. There is also a power port on the front now to allow the connection of two accessories as well. (This is for future expansion of the kit to include one more item that I wished this radio had built into it, an S meter)…

I created the box with the cabling to connect it to the Penntek TR-35 radio and it makes a station out of it basically. Just add your favorite CW key and you are off to the races.

I really like the layout of this radio, if I could alter the design at all, it would be to add two pushbuttons to send the CW memories with, but that is nitpicking to be honest. One other thing is that I like to have an S meter for some reason, it is fine to operate without it, but I just like having it for some reason… The system works well as it is and once you use it for literally a couple of minutes, it is easy to send the memories. If you are into small CW radios, this is one to have in my opinion…

Another thing I like about this radio is the fact that all the controls are on the surface that you need when operating. I like that it has the four knobs at the bottom and i usually use all four of them in an activation! Come to think of it, I usually use EVERY control on the radio on every outing… Everything you need and nothing you don’t…except for that S meter… HaHa. Another thing I like about this radio is the size. It is so small that it fits in my hand (for the most part) and is a 4 band CW transceiver! Even though it doesn’t have an antenna tuner, this is still a huge win for me. It sold me almost immediately when I took it to the field. That was when I realized I had found the replacement for the Elecraft K1 that I had used for so many years..

What your going to notice about today’s logbook page is that it doesn’t have very many calls in it. There is a couple of reasons for this. The first one is that the band was fading in and out pretty heavily. Just look at the time stamps on the RBN reports below and the associated the dB levels at those times, it was up and down heavily. Now I understand these stations are scattered around the country, but they are all west coast for the most part ( a feature of 17 meters is it skips over the closer states for me on my hamstick) and they show an amazing amount of variation in signal in just a few minutes of time. Once I looked at this, I realized I just needed to call and when the band would open up I would get two or three and then it would close back down, call a few minutes and get a couple more…rinse and repeat. It was still a lot of fun and I work Japan in one of the openings too!!!

Just check out that one lone DX contact from Japan! I was blown away when I heard his callsign coming into my tiny little radio. I love these kinds of days just as much as the faster paced, high QSO count days. It is just fun to setup a radio and make contact with distant stations whether in my own country or half way around the world.

Thank you for following along on my little journey to a local park, I hope it inspires you to get on the air and make contact with someone out there.

72 WK4Ds

The weather can be fickle…

We went to my local park (K-2169) to do a little POTA and to enjoy the nice weather there.

I setup at the canyon rim today in the shade and got my rig setup in my usual tree and everything. I look on the web and the MUF showed that 17 meters was open and I dialed around and did hear stations so that was promising. I tuned up the antenna on an open frequency and started calling CQ…and called and called …and called. No one answered my calls for something like 10 straight minutes. I even had someone respot me once but never heard anyone on the air

I even took a few minutes to confirm that the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 and the Ten Tec 277 Antenna tuner were set correctly with my nanoVNA. They were in fact set correctly…so I just wasn’t being heard on 17 meters. Probably because I am only using 15 watts from the Argonaut. Maybe because the band sucked like a Hoover vacuum cleaner that day, who knows…

This antenna tuner is the Ten Tec 277. It has options to connect a COAX to an antenna, a balanced line to the antenna and even a random wire input (which is what I was using on this day) The variety of connections is what led me to acquire it in the first place, I like the ability to use it with any antenna I have and it works quite well in that role. It is easy to tune and the SWR meter works well too. I don’t use it as a traditional SWR meter though, I use it to watch for changes in the antenna system. If the SWR starts to climb then I know something is changing and I need to look into it, I have had things like the counterpoise wire break in the crimp lug before and not realize it due to it being inside the heat shrink tubing and this meter showed it to me. It also works for tuning purposes if I forget my nanoVNA as well.

My nanoVNA kit is almost entirely adapters and the tiny little VNA over to the side. I love this device and wonder how I got along without one before.

Anyway, back to that activation on that day. Since17 meters was apparently turned off by this point, it was with a heavy heart that I QSY-ed to 40 meters. I tuned up and started calling on this band and it didn’t take long to get someone in the log. After getting quite a few “locals” on 40 meters, I shifted my focus up to 20 meters. For me with my low antennas in park activations I will normally get closer states on 40 meters and more distant stations on 20 meters and higher. That is one of the reasons I like 17 and 15 so much. When they are open I have had great performance with DX stations. If you look at the map below, the close in contacts are all the 40 meter contacts and some of the closer ones are 20 meters.

I just love maps like this one where there is this one lone QSO way off.

It was about this time that the storm clouds really started to look ominous on the western horizon. But they didn’t really seem to be moving closer so I kept going. Well, 20 meters was open is all I can say. My very first QSO on 20 meters was with G3WPF in the UK! I actually thought he was an American station and I was missing the first letter so I had him repeat it a couple of times…lol. I am glad he didnt give up as I figured it out finally and got him in the log. What an awesome way to hop on 20 meters with! DX right out of the chute!!!

As can be seen from the logbook, I had a decent run on 20 meters before two things happened at basically the same time. The storm started to move into the area, and another ham tuned up on top of me and I couldn’t hear stations anymore. I chalk it up to them not being able to hear me as I was only 15 watts into a random wire pretty low to the ground. Anyway, that was enough to get me to call QRT and pack it all up before it got wet.

Until next time I hope to hear you on the air!

de WK4DS 72

Overcast POTA activation strikes gold!

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

My 80th Activation of K-2169

This AAR is brought to you by… wait for it… me! Lol. But seriously, today is special for another reason or two, on this day I activated Cloudland Canyon State Park for the 80th time and I met another ham at my home park!

Today, once again I setup the truck in the lower lot like I did a while back as it is faster somewhat but also it has a different view as well. I normally don’t setup down here as I have had issues with electronic hash noise in this area (I am guessing it is coming from inverters in the campground just over the hill) so that is why I goto the top of the hill where the disc golfers are most of the time. The antenna situation today is as follows, I went ahead and installed all the radials at once as it was threatening to rain the whole time and would sprinkle on occasion during the activation regularly.

I also used my RG-316 coax today along with my rain proof “countermeasures” which consist of a peanut bag taped over the coax connector to keep it dry during the activation. This is a field expedient solve that also happens to be a way to recycle a common piece of trash that would otherwise end up in the landfill. I can even reuse the tape a couple of times if I am careful.

Since I connected all my radials today, I also tried to use the whole suite of antennas that I have currently. If you will look closely, you will se I also installed QD mounts on my hamsticks as well. This made band changes so much faster!

I figured I would start on 17 meters to see what I could hear up there. When I connected it and saw the radio, I had high hopes as the waterfall on the Icom IC-705 had several signals on it. Calling CQ almost immediately netted 2 dx contacts! I worked DL1AX in Germany and SP9RXP in Poland! Did I mention I am only using 5 watts?!?! SP9RXP is 5060 miles from K-2169 so that qualifies for the 1000 miles per watt award! One day I will actually apply for these… HIHI I attribute this entirely to the new common mode choke I made and was using and a nice little band opening that happened at the same time. The choke probably didn’t have much of an impact on this but I want to believe it did.

This choke works so much better than my other one that it isnt even a real comparison. It also seems to help with band noise, but that could just be me wanting to believe it does since I built it more than anything. I know it measures real good on the nanoVNA… lol

While I was on 20 meters this camper van rolls by real slow, I tend to get that a lot with all the radials and the hamstick on the back of the truck. Then the camper van stops right in front of me and the guy gets out and starts over my way. I also get this a lot as people are curious and want to know what I am doing. But then it takes a completely different direction when he says (I am paraphrasing a little here) “Are you doing Parks on the Air?” This caught me off guard as I had never had someone who knew what I was doing, actually ask me if that was what it was.

Turns out this camper was none other than W5DXQ on vacation! He is from Texas and is very active on the air using an assortment of modes. I was in the middle of a QSO so I asked him to let me clear it then we proceeded to talk for about 20 minutes about my rig and CW and digital modes and how he uses the spotter system and SSB and the list goes on and on. Meeting Jeff was the highlight of the activation…well that and working two dx stations right out of the gate on 17 meters… It was awesome to finally meet someone else who does POTA at a park. I am so glad he decided to stop and ask what I was doing. I hope to work him on the air at some point! Now the challenge for me is to meet someone actually activating like Jeff did when he found me today.

Once we finished our eyeball QSO he headed off on his adventure and I got back on the air. Looking at the QSO map, it looks really odd with the two european stations when compared to the North American dispersion that happened once the band opening closed on 17 meters. I normally net at least a few western states but today saw no one west of Texas.

As you can see from the logbook, today 30 and 20 meters were the bands to use but even then the reports were showing how the bands were fading in and out. I did make some contacts on all four bands though so I am super happy with that.

The peeps over at the POTA website even sent me this cool certificate to commemorate the 80th activation! Nice!

All in all, it was a great day for POTA. I hope to hear you on the air soon. 72 de WK4DS

Today is the day I went roving in POTA parks.

The rover award is when you activate at least 5 parks in one UTC day.

My final location of the day, Booker T Washington State Park K-2933 and it worked wonderfully!

I have been interested in this whole “rover” thing for a while now. So I finally dug into the rules so I would know what is required and laid out a plan. I found 5 parks that I could access easily and set out a route to them and just loaded down the truck with gear in anticipation of needing backup stuff. I didnt need it, but I had it. Like what you see here is three radios. The TR-35 (which is what I used for most of the day), the Icom IC-705, and the Elecraft K1 makes for a strong QRP expedition.

Anyway, so I figure I would start with my local park since I know where the parking lot is and the proximity to the main road is really good. I chose the Sitton Gulch parking lot at the bottom of the mountain because of the main road noted above and the fact that I have had great luck here in the past.

I got the activation, plus a few more contacts than I needed, in about 20 minutes of air time. Not a bad start! Well, I got excited once I cleared the pileup and had the activation in the bag and completely forgot to get a photo of the truck here. I realized it at the next park… If you want to know what that looks like, just read this blog post K-2169 POTA Activation at the very foot of a MOUNTAIN - AAR. It has a few photos of this parking area and I was in that lot.

I wanted to make sure I had enough time to activate each of the five parks AND not leave people calling if at all possible. Since I am using QRP power, this should not be a problem though and I normally dont get more than four or five calling me at once with two being the norm for me. Basically, pile ups are small for me. So I wanted to shave time off of the other parts to leave more time for “ON AIR” activities. Below is a quick photo of the cab of the truck showing how I left the gear when changing parks.

I just left the TR-35 connected and laid it on the dash to where it would not slide off and broke down the antenna by just removing the hamstick and disconnecting the coax. Then I put the yellow mount with the radials still attached in the truck bed ever so carefully and rolled the coax into the back seat and I was off. This made park changes really fast since I was sticking with 20 meters for this trip as I had good confidence that I could get the activations with just that band pretty quickly.

The next stop was the Zahnd WMA, which to be honest, I had never heard of till I started looking at doing a Rover. It is literally next to the road so it was in and out with a cleared little pileup and on I went. Below is what the parking area at the WMA looks like, it is actually really nice for a WMA parking lot. I had the place to myself since nothing is in season right now. Something else of note is that when I was working the early parks, I would cross 10 QSOs and then once I worked all the callers, I would go QRT and move, but once I got K-0716 activated I started getting comfortable with achieving the goal and would call CQ longer. For now though, as you can see below, 10 contacts (and just a few more) and I was off to the next location.

So the next location was about 10 miles down the road. I have activated Otting WMA before so I knew what to expect when I got here. The parking are is also right by the highway (which is why I chose this route to be honest) so access time is minimal.

You will notice I back into the parking location as much as possible to get the antenna out of the way so people and pets do not wander into it while I am transmitting.

Deploying the system involves, backing into a location to get my antenna out of the way and then opening the bed cover, installing the yellow antenna mount, laying the two radials out, then screwing in the radiator. Next I open the rear truck door, grab the coax and plug it into the antenna mount. A couple minutes arranging the cab, while listening to the band for an opening then I spot myself on the website and were off to the races. Below is the info kiosk at Otting, all these WMAs seem to have one now which is nice so I can see if there is a managed hunt or what.

Something else I like about the rover idea is there is a lot of driving in the country here. I passed through the town of Menlo GA between parks 3&4 and stopped to grab a couple of photographs. Some with my camera and some with my phone. Small town America is cool…

So for my next stop, I went to the Chickamauga national military Park, which is K-0716 and set up in the parking lot of what is known as the “tower” by the locals. It is actually known as Wilder tower and is a really common attraction in the park.

I backed into the space, even though they are angled in such a way as to promote pulling into them so this took a minute, but that allowed me to spread my radials in the grass strip between the parking space and the road. I have found that getting the radials out of the way of other people so they don’t trip over them is critical and backing into the parking spaces normally allows this. Another thing of note is do not transmit when there are people that can touch the radials as even at QRP power levels, there is enough RF energy on the radials to shock someone ever so slightly so the smart thing to do is not transmit while people are around your antenna. I had to be very mindful of the other people in the park while I did this particular activation, as I did not set up in my usual spot where there are very few people. In hindsight, I should have just used the usual spot as it is out of the way, and most people do not ever bother going there. Another thing to note is that by this point in the trip, I had gotten good at setting up and breaking down the antenna and radio to move to the next park. I knew exactly what I needed to do to get the radio in a position to where I could just set it out of the way and move to the next location without having to do a bunch of unnecessary, connecting and reconnecting of wires.

Once I got to this park, I realized how much time I still had and I decided to work contacts for a little longer here. I still continued to use 20 meters only because I did not want to get too comfortable with band changes and getting out additional equipment until I got to the fifth park. This park was actually fairly busy with people coming to see the tower, jogging and walking their dogs. Seeing this helped me to decide to keep the extra gear put away as well and figured I would play with the other bands once I got to the last park. I also knew the area at the last park pretty well and knew I would not have to worry about kids and pets getting into my antenna there.

As you can see though, I had a good run of a little pileup and it took me about 35 minutes to clear it. Once it was clear and I took a call from Teresa to sort out some shop problems, I was off to the last park of the day, K-2933. This has been one of my easy parks that if I am in the north east portion of Chattanooga that I can get to and have a nice quiet activation. so I go by there every month or so. I will probably get my repeat offender award for it at some point this summer.

Here is the storage tube I put together out of 2” PVC pipe to keep my growing ham-stick collection from getting damaged when not in use. It was cheap and I didn’t even glue it together, just friction. It fits diagonally in the truck bed with almost not play so it doesn’t roll around at all. Currently I only have 4 ham-sticks in it so I have plenty of room. You can also see the spare radials for the other bands I used here today laying on the ground for band changes. Like a genius, I tuned each band with out the radials for the other bands on the base and to prevent me from having any sort of problems arising from tuned stuff in the area, I just used them like I tuned them. Of course this worked beautifully well, but it did add a little more work. I am going to make the antenna mount to where I can install four ham-sticks at once and since they have such great out of band rejections, the RF for each band should find the right antenna without having to change them out. I just need to put the whole thing together and tune it first.

Mu impromptu sunshade for the Icom IC-705 worked really well.

Another surprise for this trip was that I pressed the Icom IC-705 into service as I have not used it in a while and wanted to play with it some today. I had also brought the Elecraft K1, but just as backup incase the other two radios failed on me…lol. The IC-705 is touch screen technology so it is easy to do all sorts of things like band changes and sending from memory when calling CQ. Plus it has a built in speaker which is nice when there isn’t a lot of noise in the area. Headphones are great when I am alone, but it is hard to explain to a passerby what I am doing if they can not hear the radio too. This is one of the only oughts I have with the Penntek TR-35. It has no internal speaker…

Here is your free tip of the day, most of you probably already know this, but some of you may not. Use colored phasing tape to color code your antenna and matching radials so you know which radials go with each ham-stick or what ever antenna you decide to use. This makes putting the right kit together a simple task instead of frustrating when the SWR is acting strange because you used the wrong radials with the vertical that you have on the mount.

Now as you can see below, I started on 30 meters. I ran into a problem here though, there was some sort of broadband QRM that was spaced in intervals across the whole band space. I finally found that 10.116mhz was fairly quiet and started calling. I got 4 answers before giving up to the QRM and moving to 20 meters where I had a great time free of this pesky QRM that was down on 30 meters. After a solid run of 18 contacts on 20 meters I figured I would give 17 meters a shot before calling it a day. I had somewhere I needed to be later so I had to pack it up by 19:00 UTC. Anyway, I do the band change to 17 meters and start calling. You can see in the log that it took me about 5 minutes to do the band change and get back on the air. This is why I laid all the stuff out like I did. I wanted to make it easy to do till I can get the multi antenna system done. Well I netted another 18 QSOs on 17 before having to go QRT for the day. Total for this park FOURTY in 1 hour and 20 minutes (80 minutes). I could have probably gotten more if I had not messed with the WARC bands and just stuck to 20 meters as it was going crazy. BUT where is the fun in that? I had the activation so why not play on the other bands a little since I have the stuff?

If you see your call in the log and want to swap QSL cards, I only do paper cards and I will respond to all that I get. This was a load of fun and I think next time I will take a helper to help with logging and band changes and stuff, I went solo today and it was … quiet… at times. This makes for a great times if you don’t mind the solitude, but for some it might be a problem. I was busy all day so it didn’t bother me in the slightest. Just be aware of that.

So till next time, get your radio out!!!

72

David WK4DS

A “quickie” POTA activation…lol

What happens when you plan to do something “right quick”? That’s right, it doesn’t happen like that at all. Haha.

I had about an hour of free time today between activities with the XYL and K-2169 was … technically… on the way to meet her, so LET’S POTA!

K-2169 Cloudland Canyon State Park is a 15 minute drive from my house so if you look at that park on the POTA site, you will find I go there a lot. Today, I wanted to get setup quicker than normal, which means I opted for the lower parking lot. This parking area is next to the canyon proper and is where I like to setup my wire antennas in the warmer months.

The lower lot was pretty sparse so I was able to get in a corner, out of the way, which also afforded me the ability to use the side of the truck to shade me from the setting sun. I grabbed a camp chair out of the back of the truck, threw up the 17m hamstick and got on the air. The truck tire made the perfect “table” for the Penntek TR-35 QRP radio too. I used the battery to tie down the coax so it would not slide off the truck and pile up on me (like it did right before I sat the battery on it) and made the station nice and tidy.

I started on 17m calling CQ as I heard quite a few stations having QSOs. After calling CQ for a few minutes I got an answer from NA7C in Utah and then a little later KJ7DT came in strong as well from Idaho. But then I called for a long time with nothing coming back so I decided to change bands and see if I could finish up on 20 meters.

Once on 20 meters, I found a clear spot and started calling CQ again. Just a moment later KJ7DT came back again! This time even stronger!!! Idaho was booming into Georgia today. That gave me hope! So I worked Paul leisurely, as he was the only one to answer my call, and then cleared him to find myself in a ginormous pileup! Where did everybody come from!?!?!? Good Lord I had trouble pulling out single stations. I have never really had to deal with a legit pileup before. Oh sure, I have had 4 or 5 stations call at once but this sounded like 20 or 30! I start plucking out callsigns and in the process of the next 38 minutes I put 38 QSOs in the log. That has to be some sort of a record for me!

Some items of note from today that I found interesting were that I worked KJ7DT back to back on two bands without coordinating that with him, then I ended up working three DX stations today with one of those being DL1AX in Germany, another was VO1SW in Canada and finally CU3DI in the Azores! I even worked a Park to Park for a 2Fer! Sweet! Speaking of sweet, the dogwood trees are in full bloom as well making for a beautiful scene on top of a 40 QSO run on my tiny little QRP radio in just under an hour and that includes an antenna change!

Check out the QSO map I got from the HAMRS app showing the spread. Side note about HAMRS, if the op isn’t found in the Hamdb database, then search them on QRZ and get their grid square and add it to the QSO info if you want them to show up on the QSO map. This is how I get non-POTA ops to show up.

Here is the USA map without the tags so you can see the radiation dispersion of my 5 watts and a hamstick antenna.

I think that I could have most likely worked most of these ops today with SSB and it would have been successful. 20 meters was that strong today. This comes on the heels of the previous evening where I worked Ian in New Zealand on 10 meters via greyline! This has been a good 24 hours for radio! Confirmed via QRZ in real time no less! I am sending him a real QSL card anyway but that always gets me excited. It isn’t everyday that I can even hear New Zealand on 10 meters much less them hear me.

Here is another tidbit about me. If at all possible, I will always clear the pileup before going QRT as I know some of them are needing my park for one of their goals and if I can help them with their goal, whatever it might be, I want to do that. I had not initially planned on staying for an hour but it was so rewarding that I just couldn’t power down the rig. Lol

Today was a pleasant surprise and I look forward to more like it in the future.

72 and I hope to hear you on the radio!

de WK4DS

Activating a park in Hawaii with with the Elecraft K1

I will be honest here, I thought this would be easier…

Let me explain. You see first off, I live on the east coast of the mainland USA where getting an activation completed or even dozens of QSOs in an activation, is rather easy even at QRP power levels. I have done activations with 4 watts and once I think it was only 1 watt. But someone joked in the past, “that is because you are where all the HAMs are at!” Nothing could be truer as I found out.

So here is the setup for the opportunity. We decide after some travel plans fall through, to goto Hawaii (the big island) for a week or so. This is two fold, we want to see the active volcano as that is a bucket list item for us and it is warm in February…which is always a plus. Well, I talk to the wife and come to the conclusion that there will be time to do a park or two while we are there as well. So I start figuring out what radio to bring.

Just read the previous blog post to see what I brought and why (spoiler, it is the Elecraft K1). So once I figured out the radio and storage/travel bag, I started looking for parks on the POTA app.

We are staying in the town of Hilo so I naturally started looking near there for possible parks. My criteria was that I wanted a park that wasn’t blocked by mountains or in a canyon, preferably one near the beach (I mean, who doesn’t want to do an activation on the beach???) and has a tree to allow me to get the antenna up as close to vertical as possible. This last part is going to be the biggest challenge I would come to find out. Since I packed only wire antennas in my kit, I would need something I could throw a line over to haul up a wire with.

Well, the first park I chose was not really suitable as it didnt have any trees near the parking lot and also no tables nears the trees that are there. The next problem showed up on day two and lasted till almost time to leave…the rain… seems Hilo is a literal rain forest and I failed to do the proper research to learn this ahead of time. Maybe I was not supposed to know this so I would take my gear, I don’t know either way, but it rained 14” of rainfall in a 36 hour period of time at one point. yes, FOURTEEN inches fell in a 36 hour period… The rain was near continuous for many days. Well, on day four, we had about 3 hours to kill in the afternoon so I looked at a park in Hilo proper, it is down by the beach and runs all the way down the the royal gardens. I drove by it and scouted the area and found some trees that would hold a wire. This is park number K-6407 (Wailoa River State Recreation Area) and basically it fit all the criteria.

This is where it gets messy… I decide to give it a try as it is a good time of day to reach the west coast of the US. Grey line would be coming across the US for the next few hours and I need all the help I can get with my measly 7 watts. The only problem is that the rain is coming down in sheets at this point… where to setup??? I opted for the car.

So I get out in the deluge and throw a line over a nearby tree and haul up the antenna which turned out to be more of a sloper this time than a vertical. This antenna is a 41’ radiator and a 13’ counterpoise and is almost resonant on the 40 meter band. I roll the window down a little and run the counter poise and radiator into the car and hook then to the radio.

Once the radio was connected I tried to run the car for the heater and power port only to find it was producing a significant amount of rf hash that the little Elecraft radio couldn’t handle. So I got out the battery and shutoff the car. This actually worked really well, I could hear much better and the car was actually quite warm so I and Teresa were happy. Yep, she sat with me in the car and read a book which I worked you guys on HF.

The next problem I ran into was the contest… I had no idea there was a contest running this weekend and had planned around that literally zero… Well, now what? I went to where I couldn’t hear anyone and started calling CQ and called for ten straight minutes with no answers.

You can see in the log that I got on the air and spent ten minutes finding a clear frequency and called CQ for probably 20 minutes before giving up and moving to 17 meters. Now remember that the whole time this is happening that it is pouring rain. So I am starting to lose hope…

17 meters proved to be MUCH more productive. I found a clear spot tuned up and went to work. Here it still took several minutes of calling for people to hear me. I am going to guess they swung their beams around to me as some of them came booming in to my little wire in the middle of the ocean! I was starting to get somehwere when it seemed my band opening on 17 just stopped so I tried the 30 meter band in hopes of getting something there but no one replied. Next I figured I would give 20 meters another try. I went fairly high in the CW area to get away from the contesters and it seemed to work. I did get a couple of contacts, but it was at this point that I had to pack it up so we could go to the airport to pick up our daughter who was flying in… with 7 QSOs in the log. I really wanted to get this activation and as fate would have it, I started right after the new UTC day began so I actually had time. This was the most difficult hour and half of my POTA life thus far. I had netted 7 contacts in over 90 minutes of air time…I had not anticipated this. Normally, due to the spot page, I get an activation in short order. I have a new appreciation for Hawaii call signs now that I could not have before.

The next thing that happened was fate working in my “POTA” favor. You see the airline let Sierra wait in Maui for an extra two hours due to issues with the gates in the airport. So since the airport in Hilo is 10 minutes from this park I was activating, we just drove back over to the park and I found a better tree to get the wire almost completely vertical this time.

Launching into the “second session” I got on 30 meters hoping to get something there but nobody answered me after quite a while. So I just moved back to 20 meters and again went high in the CW portion. I have never went to 14080 mhz before so I wasn’t sure how this would work. It worked fairly well to be honest, as I got my activation completed during this time part of the time!!!

Since I had my 10 QSOs finally, I wanted to try and work someone on every band I could use on the radio which meant moving down to 40 meters for a while. I finally worked NA7C in Utah on 40 meters with just 7 watts!!!!! I also learned from the RBN that my K1 needs to be aligned. It was consistently off frequency by at least 200 hertz.

So for this trip I took the Gemini travel key as I really like the form factor of this key for these kinds of operations. It is the perfect size and design for ops where there is no surface to set the key on. Also take notice how my trousers are still very wet from stringing the antenna up in the tree. Lol. I wondered how much signal I was losing to the rain… The logbook is a mess because of the terrible band conditions and me making tons of notes about the activation.

Take a look at my original spot note. Lol I had a big idea there!!!

I was also hopeful when I saw the RBN pick me up. So I knew my signal was propagating out to the mainland. You can understand then why I was getting worried when I got no calls for all that time I was calling CQ on 20 meters…

Here you can see my RBN spot on 17 meters as well. It was weak, but it spotted from two different regions. Check that out. But it was during this time that people actually start hearing me and answering!

I was really impressed by some of the signals too. These people have wonderful radio stations and they are my heros to be honest. Below is a spot from the second session of when I had a couple more hours due to the fight delays and was able to finish the activation.

The QSO map looks a lot like I thought it would other than I didn’t expect the mid west and eastern contacts at all. I also figured on a few Japan contacts to be honest, I really thought I would get a couple with how active the Japanese people are in POTA. I only heard a few “J” calls the whole time and none of them could hear me. So when I was spotted by 5W1SA in Samoa then again by VE6WZ in Canada I was just sure I would get some Japan calls, but nothing. Figures. Maybe I did the grey line wrong…who knows.

So when I wrapped up the activation, the antenna was drowned and when I got back to the room I spread all of it out to dry. Note it took more than one day to dry since it rains here almost nonstop and the humidity wont let the stuff dry very fast. It probably won’t be done drying ít till I get home.

Well, that is the story of my activation from the isle of Hawaii while I was on vacation. Thank you for reading along and now go have some fun! What is your most insane story about an activation? Leave me a comment below and let’s have some fun.

Activating POTA site K-5524 in central Florida in January 2023

So I am staying in Tampa Florida for a few weeks in January of 2023 and brought a couple of QRP radios with me just in case I had time to do some POTA… Well, this worked out and I did get to do a few activations.

Welcome to Chito Branch Reserve. This is a really nice place tucked into the bustling metropolis of Brandon…or more commonly known as a suburb of Tampa FL… LOL, it is a really nice little area and I was glad to see some people actually using the site for something other than a HAM getting a POTA activation. The lot next to the truck was for horse trailers, but was locked. While I was there, there were two different groups of people that showed up to use the land as well as me. One guy was going on a bird watching adventure and the other was a dad with his two sons who played with several RC machines till all the batteries were drained.

I checked all the maps I could find and from everything I was able to figure out, the parking lot is fully inside the boundaries so I was able to setup the truck-tenna and use it as my power source too.This makes setup a lot more simple as I don’t have to use the throw line and try to hang wire antennas in the trees. I also didn’t know if that was even allowed here either so I was apprehensive about doing that at first.

If you will notice in the photos of the parking area that it is really small, this comes into play a little later when the wife of the guy with his two boys, shows up for a minute. You see when I arrived there was no one there at all and deployed the antenna radials left, and right of the truck. This was not a problem until the fellow with the RC airplane, crashed it into a palm tree and could not get it loose. He ended up calling his wife to bring him a pole so he could fish the airplane out of the tree. When she arrived, she ran squarely over the radial on the other side of the truck. Fortunately, since it is in place with only a weight, it was not a problem to simply pull the wire out from under the car and repositioned it. They apologized profusely, but I told them that it was simply a piece of speaker wire, and it was not a big deal as I had already broken it a couple of times myself and laughed. He retrieved the stick, and then promptly got the airplane out of the palm tree and proceeded to fly until the battery went dead about 20 minutes later lol.

There was some sort of QRM at this site too, but it was not near as bad as the other site. The QRM was some sort of thumping that would happen every so many seconds like clockwork, it was almost like WWV, but more spaced out in time. It was also wide band as it covered the entire amateur 20 m band at once with a single pulse. It wouldn’t run up the band. It was the whole band at once so this was some sort of broad-spectrum noise, whatever it was.

This was not really a problem as I was able to turn down the RF gain about 10% and almost completely eliminated it so I didn’t have to really listen to it all that much. What is it with Florida and these band noise issues that I do not have back home on top of lookout mountain? Lol

I just love the look of the Spanish moss in the trees down here, it has this “ancient” kind of look to it…

Having the cigarette lighter adapter and a Anderson power pole on the end of the cord is a godsend for a QRP POTA operation. The power port in the truck is rated for 15 amps and the cord I bought has a 10 amp fuse in it, so there is no danger of problems there as none of my QRP rigs pull more than 5 amps max. I also had enough cord to reach all the way to the bed cover of the truck so I was able to set up outside and not have to sit inside the truck to do my operation. The weather being as nice as it was I wanted to do that instead. In the photo below you can see the common mode choke I made out of a toroid to keep RF noise out of the radio, I am going to test this to see how much attenuation it produces with my nanoVNA at some point…

I got some new calls in my log since I am 500 miles from home, I have a new areas to call into, like Tennessee and North Carolina!!! Also, I looked, and this is my fourth state! To activate a new state for me is a pretty big deal as I do not travel by vehicle to the states outside of my local area very often. Woo hoo! 46 to go! ha ha ha! Honestly, I do not ever expect to get all 50 states in the log as activating, but it is fun to get a new one when I can.

The operating position for this day. Today I used my ICOM IC705 transceiver and my little travel paddles from a previous blog post, and my headphones that I normally use on the TR35 transceiver. I normally do not use headphones with the 705, but today it was windy and there was a lot of car noise as cars would go by on the highway just a few meters away. Wearing headphones almost completely eliminated this noisy environment and made it easy to copy CW.

This is the bucket of extra stuff I brought in case of problems and it has helped a lot on this trip already. I threw this container of random stuff in the truck before I left, as I wanted to make sure that I did not have a project like an activation get shut down over something as mundane as a cable failing. Also, do not laugh at the small, cheapo multimeter. It works and I was able to do several little simple, troubleshooting type things with it and it also is very small, light weight and compact. Sometimes the simple little cheapie ones work great for what you need them for… Another perk to the cheap multimeter is that if I drop and break it or do something to it in the field and it gets destroyed or someone carries it off or any number of terrible fates, I am only out a few bucks and it doesn’t hurt me as bad as the nice Fluke brand meters I have at home.

38 QSOs in the log is a pretty good day for me, Especially since one is from across the Atlantic ocean!!! MM5DWW was booming into my location and when I looked him up on QRZ, I saw why. This man has an antenna farm to die for, nice kit OM, hope to work you again soon! I am thankful to the Lord that nothing went wrong and that I had wonderful weather too. If you enjoyed this blog post, I would appreciate a like, and if you would share it to your friends, so that I can grow this page.

Thank you, and 72 until next time. WK4DS

Trouble activating K-1878 Hillsborough River State Park in Florida!

I ran into some problems with the area I was in but worked through them and even grabbed a photo of some local wildlife. So let’s get started…

Finally!!! I GOT MY FOURTH STATE!!! Lol. We had went to Tampa Florida for a few weeks to escape the winter in North Georgia and so I grabbed a couple of radios for some POTA fun.

First, a little about the park. This park was easy to get to and it is a big loop through the wilderness area with pull offs as you go around. There are hiking trails, camping areas as well as playgrounds and other facilities on site. They even have a small outfitters store in the center of the park. All of the parking spaces are pull in angled from the road as you see in the photos throughout the entire park except for the very first one where there is a small visitor area with a historical reference section.

The park is beautiful, and basically shows you what a wild Florida would look like if it was not covered in houses and strip malls. The park does require a fee to access it and you pay when you pull into the entrance.

There is a guard shack and they collect the fee there. I had several park employees travel by my setup while I was operating and no one gave it a second look. I believe this is because my set up is very low impact as the radials are held in place by weights, and the antenna is actually connected to my truck and freestanding.

This parking created a small challenge for me as I tend to need to back into the spaces so that I can deploy my antenna ground system. My solution to this problem was to drive around the Park until I found a section of the parking lot that was vacant of cars. Once I found a vacant parking lot, I could pretty much choose where I wanted to put my truck, so I put it in the furthest corner from any infrastructure which typically lends itself to not ever being in anyone’s way.

As a sidenote, once I had finished my activation, I realized that there was a observer watching from a nearby tree. I am pretty certain this is a red shouldered hawk and it’s very beautiful. There were several of them in the park and I happened to see this one fly down and catch something small on the ground and then flew up to this tree branch in a nearby small tree, where he sat (or she I’m not sure which) until I was able to get my camera and walk over there and take a photo of it.

Onto the Amateur Radio portion of this adventure. Once I found a spot to get out of the way, and that was far from any structures that I could find, I parked in the corner of the parking lot, deployed my antenna system and got out my ICOM IC-705 radio. This is where the trouble began, I learned quickly that there was some sort of interference that was washing over the entire CW portion of the 20 m band. I did not even bother to check the other bands as the only antenna I deployed today was a 20m hamstick.

I jokingly considered it to be similar to the “Russian woodpecker” of days of yore as it sounded like that every few kC. I am pretty sure it is the radar installation at the Zephyrhills municipal Airport as I was in the direct flight path to the runway. My antenna being a vertically oriented radial, is a very noisy antenna anyway so I am leaning towards this deduction to the problem. I have heard RF hash from other devices, and none of them have ever sounded like this. It literally sounded like a woodpecker.

Combine that with the fact that I was only 7 miles distant from the airport. I also had aircraft going overhead occasionally as well. This is what clued me in that the airport was somewhere nearby, and that I was in the flight path, I kept hearing airplanes lol.

I tried a couple of different things to see if the problem would go away and figured out really quick that it was not with my system, and that I could only work with what was there. I even turned down the RF gain in an attempt to hide the noise from me, but that didn’t really help since I would be transmitting sometimes on top of this noise, and that would make people not able to hear me calling CQ. What I wound up doing was looking for a section of the band between the noise spots and setting up in those areas. I finally found a couple near the QRP calling frequency and started calling CQ.

This worked really well as I was able to quickly get 20 QSOs in the log in about 30 minutes. I even got a few of the guys, that I normally get back in Georgia, in the log as well, such as K9IS for instance.

The set up today consisted of the 20m hamstick with radials piped into the truck to the 705 direct with no tuner. The power from the truck powering the radio out of the cigarette lighter port and I was using my little portable travel key that I bought off eBay and that was it, very simple.

So, I guess the moral of the story is don’t give up, even if you have something like the Russian woodpecker beating down your receiver. Just find a spot that is as clear as you can get it and try from there, you never know what you will find.

Thanks and 72

WK4DS