Tough conditions, dead batteries and a lot of amateur radio fun.
This is a tale of a guy who thinks he is going to get a “quick” POTA activation and then go grab some photos as well… It didn’t go like that…at all.
You see I thought I had this whole Parks On The Air thing dialed in and have even built a little “kit” to activate parks with that I can just grab and go. I am repurposing an old camera bag (a story for another day) and it organizes the QRP rig perfectly for activations. Soooooo, this is how it goes on that fateful day. I have a few hours in the afternoon on June 8th 2022 and tell the wife I am gonna “run” over to Cloudland Canyon state park and get a quick activation and then be back in time for supper with the kids later. I grab said POTA bag, hop in the truck and head over to my spot to activate K-2169.
Well, I should have heeded the warning when I got there I guess as my favorite location on top of the hill was occupied with a group of teens on a day trip from a local school. I circle through the parking lot really slowly surveying the area and decided to park for a bit and see if I could figure something else out when I catch a break! They start packing up to leave!!! So I wait patiently for them to vacate the location I want to use and once clear, I move the truck and grab my gear.
Setup was frustrating this time as I had to throw my line 7 times to get a good location like I wanted (turned out later that really didnt seem to matter, haha). I FINALLY get the line up in the tree and then hook up the radio and we are off to the races! Well, I was off to the races, seems nobody could hear me. It took several minutes of calling CQ to get my first contact. Normally once I get one, then I will end up with at least an activation (10 contacts) within about the next ten minutes. Not this time, it took a full ten minutes to get the next QSO in the log! So then I figure I would go hunting some other parks and I did get one then another! NO! It was a SOTA op that is didnt hear well… lol. Well after that I got my hopes up again as I got a run of 5 in about 25 minutes. As I would be just about to give up and try something else, I would get another one and it would keep me in place a little longer. So I am an hour in and only have 8 contacts at this point, I need 10 for a technical activation, so I REALLY want to get two more before having to shut down the operation. It was at this point that I realized why I was getting the 339 reports…THE REMOTE BATTERY WAS DEAD!!! I’m thinking at this point. Really doofus, your brought a dead battery to an activation??? Well, yeah, I did… So I am now running on the battery that comes with the 705 which will only produce 5 watts output. I can hear stations but they cant hear me… I head over to 30 meters and bag N3VO for the 9th QSO in the log, it is basically time to break down the rig, but I need one more contact to have an activation, so I go back to 20 meters and switch to SSB, after trying to get through 4 pile ups without no success, I score a park to park on my last QSO of the day and get my 10th contact securing an official activation. This one was close, but I made it, I quickly broke the rig down and headed home…
So if you think you cant make it work, there is almost always a way to do it, even if you have a dead battery and the bands are terrible for QRP and you have to switch modes, you just might get it done.
73
WK4DS