Failed POTA Activation - Halls Creek Woods State Nature Preserve, K-9411, March 17, 2024

On a sunny but breezy March afternoon, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, and Scott Senefeld attempted to conduct a Parks on the Air activation of Halls Creek Woods State Nature Preserve, K-9411, the first stop of two for the pair on the Sunday before Josh would have to head back to Athens, OH on Monday morning.

They arrived to the very full parking lot and started to unpack their gear. Josh set up the IC-718 in the car, much like he did two days before at East Fork Lake, and Scott deployed the Chameleon P-Loop 2.0 magnetic loop antenna, borrowed from the Ohio University Amateur Radio Club. After putting on the analyzer it was still tuned to the 40m band from Josh's previously mentioned activation at East Fork Lake on 15-March-2024. Josh turned on the radio and started to see if a frequency was in use, he noticed that the band was very crowded so finding a spot was difficult. After he found one, he heard N8VZ testing on the frequency Josh wanted to use. Josh knows Carl from the Athens County Amateur Radio Association, of which they are both members. Josh called out to Carl to see if they could make a contact, however, it was unsuccessful. Carl then seemed to move off frequency. 

No pictures were taken during this attempted activation

Josh then spotted the pair on the POTA website under the call of KF8AJI, and started calling "CQ Parks on the Air." Much like the activation the pair performed at Mammoth Cave National Park, calling CQ turned out to be an exercise in futility because they had no stations respond to their call. Then they retuned the antenna to the 17m band, around 18.13 MHz. They were finally able to make their first contact at 1822 UTC with K4ZMF in Florida. This was probably around 20 minutes after being at the site and attempting to make contacts. Josh then called CQ some more to no avail.

They retuned once again, this time to the 20m band, around 14.7 MHz. As soon as Josh changed the radio to the 20m band he found almost no space to call CQ, as the Virginia QSO Party was going on. After he found a space in-between two stations he re-spotted the pair on the POTA website. They unfortunately were only able to make one contact with AD8BL at 1830 UTC.

They then decided to give up and pack up as more and more car were piling into the already full parking lot and it was getting very crowded.

Overall, 2 QSOs were made, both QSOs were SSB and were made with 25 watts of output power.