Activating a park in Louisiana was different…

I went to New Orleans for a conference and we stayed one extra day to do some sightseeing. We did a tour in the morning and ate lunch and figured I had time to ride over to a nearby state park and get an activation in before supper. I chose Bayou Segnette State Park (K-2356) as it was only about a 30 minute drive from the B&B we were staying at.

We get there to find a beautiful state park and almost every pavilion was occupied by these huge family reunions! That is fine though as the park is really roomy and there were plenty of picnic tables elsewhere. We looked for a picnic table in the shade of a tree that was keep kind of close to the parking lot so I didnt have to transport my gear very far.

We also decided to come during an apparent heat wave too! The temps easily reaching 99 degrees (37.2C) every day so it was like standing in front of a blow dryer while outside. It was just plain hot… This was the reason I was looking for some shade to setup in, at least we didnt have the sun beating down on me while I worked some contacts.

So I found a table by this abandoned playground. Lol! It really wasn’t abandoned but no kid wanted to touch that stuff with the air temp that high!!! The shade made all the difference though as it was kinda pleasant once you sat there a minute, got a little sweaty and then a breeze would blow.

I had my TR-35 kit in the truck from an activation last week so I got out the throw line and threw it up into this cypress tree. In the photo below you can see the table and I am pointing to the spot where the throw line went over the tree. The antenna didn’t reach into the tree itself so it was a great placement in my book. The wire being fully exposed and not crossing tree branches makes a big difference to me if for no other reason.

This made my wire a sloper running uphill to the southeast. I ran the counterpoise out at about a 90 degree angle to the 41’ wire and connected them to the tuner.

I tuned it up on 17 meters and dial around the band for a minute to find HA3NU booming in and working a fairly deep pile up. I thought about trying to work him for a minute but finally decided to find an open frequency and call CQ instead as I wasn’t sure how much time I would have. Turns out I had about an hour… good call.

I called CQ for about 1 minute and was blown away when I worked SM2SUM in Sweden right out of the gate. Today is going to be a good day…I thought. The very next station was KP4M in Puerto Rico!!! It just keeps getting better!!! I worked a few more on 17 meters and then made the jump to 20 meters (where the scores can really change…)

I worked another 26 people on 20 meters in about a half hour or so, bagging KP4M again on 20! Shoot, I even worked Paul KJ7DT today up in Idaho! The bands were pretty good if you ask me.

I wished I had time and a radio that would cover more bands to be able to get a few more out of it, TenTec Argonaut 5 I’m looking at you buddy... Maybe next time… It was a great day though and I added Louisiana to my states that I have activated!! I hope this motivates you to get out and do some POTA too. Thanks and 72!

My activation with 9/10th of a watt… on CW.

Today marks a new milestone for me. I did a complete POTA activation with less than 1 watt of transmitter power. This is only 18% of my normal power of 5 watts. The numbers seem impressive now but just wait.

I went to K-2169 to get a quick activation in before they closed the park gate as I had almost two hours of time to do it.

I have several things that would be considered road blocks to this being possible.

The first one is the power obviously. The second is I am running that power into a hamstick antenna, which is not known for there efficiency. Lastly I setup at the foot of a mountain, literally… so let’s see what happened.

Spoiler alert…it went really well. I did have a bit of a rocky start as I wanted to get on 40 meters first but no one was there from what I could tell. After a solid 5 minutes of calling CQ I got zero answers, so I checked the spot page and saw there was a bunch of activators on 20 meters, so I changed the antenna to 20 meters and got on there.

Things changed when I did this. My first contact was with Paul KJ7DT in Idaho! That is right at 1780 miles on 9/10ths of a watt! He even gave me a 559 report, which I couldn’t believe! Wow, this just might work!!!

Well, as you see in the logbook, it went surprisingly well and I was able to complete the activation and get back home well before dark too. This was a pleasant surprise to be honest about it. I have turned down my power before but never this much. Now, I am going to do a series of self challenges to see how low I can take the Icom IC-705 for output power and still get the activation.

There is an award from the QRP-ARCI called the 1000 miles per watt award. I won this award at least six times today (if I were to actually apply for it that is). That just boggles my mind. I think my furthest contact was VA7AQ in British Columbia at about 2120 miles. That comes out to 2355 miles per watt!!! That is crazy!!!

Radio waves are a strange thing sometimes. If the sun is cooperating and the earth is also happy, it is easy to get across oceans with just a watt or two of radiated power. I plan to test this theory more this summer as the solar cycle improves even more towards the maximum.

What really impressed me is with POTA you normally send more honest signal reports than in say a usual DX pile up or a contest. If you will notice, 20 meters was going strong at that moment and almost everyone was booming into my IC-705 in the rain that day. (I was inside the truck but it was raining). 9/10ths of one watt is what most hf rigs would consider the pre-amp stage. Lol. So the next time you have 100 watts and 2:1 SWR, dont sweat it too much, you still have something like 90+ times the radiated power I was using today. That should make you feel a little better about it. Haha. Until next time, warm up that atmosphere!!!

Addendum: Well I now have to get crazy low as Thomas (K4SWL) has a video where he activates with 100mW of output power… more to come…