POTA Activation - Caesar Creek State Park, K-1940, and the North Country National Scenic Trail, K-4239, March 17, 2024

On a sunny but breezy March afternoon, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, and Scott Senefeld conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Caesar Creek State Park, K-1940, and the North Country National Scenic Trail, K-4239, the second stop of two for the pair on the Sunday before Josh would have to head back to Athens, OH on Monday morning.

They arrived at the Caesar Creek Gorge Parking lot (the Gorge is K-7874) and found a nice place to park, they then tried to use the restrooms facilities located at the site, however, they were locked for the winter. The then relocated to the Flat Fork Ridge Trailhead parking lot, their restrooms were also locked! They then relocated once again to the Visitor Center, finally they were able to find unlocked restrooms. After returning to the car, they began setting up the station in the northwest corner of the parking lot. Josh set up the IC-718 in the car, exactly the same as from when they were at Halls Creek Woods State Nature Preserve, K-9411, and Scott deployed the Chameleon P-Loop 2.0 magnetic loop antenna, borrowed from the Ohio University Amateur Radio Club. This would be the last time they would use this antenna, as Josh had a Wolf River Coils 213" whip, Sporty Forty Coil, and Ground Spike waiting for him at his house in Athens.

The view from Josh's seat.

The magnetic loop antenna.

Josh found a clear frequency, spotted them under the call KF8AJI, and started calling CQ on 20m. The band was still packed from all the stations participating in the Virginia QSO Party, so finding an empty spot was a welcome surprise. Their first contact was made at 1959 UTC with WA4CB in Mississippi. Then some Park-to-Park stations called, first was KC2IPV from K-0453 in New Jersey, KD2YLZ from K-2001 in New York, and then K2MDR from K-8319, also in New Jersey. Then after finding little success in continuing to call CQ for 7 minutes straight, Josh decided to start hunting Park-to-Park QSOs in order to get 10 contacts to get at least one activation out of their day. He found N1XXU in K-1728 in Connecticut and then Lane, KC8ECK from K-1912 Florida at 2011 UTC. Lane is a Cincinnati-area native and he was curious as to where they were in Ohio and ended up having a great little conversation in-between some QSB.

Josh then found another clear frequency to call CQ on and also had limited success only finding two stations both from Mississippi, W5WRP and K5AHS at 2016 and 2017 UTC respectively. They then retuned to 17m to try and made at least one more contact to make it an activation, and hopefully with less noise from all the QSO Party Stations. Their first 17m contact was with KB5RVX in Oklahoma at 2035 UTC. Then two more stations followed after, KA5WAD, also from Oklahoma at 2037 UTC and then KB9JQU from South Dakota, who needed K-1940 on the 17m band! They then decided to wrap up as the wind was starting to blow harder and Josh started to yawn.

Overall, Josh made 12 QSOs, 4 of which were Park-to-Park, in 39 minutes of operating time. All of his QSOs were SSB and were made with 25 watts of output power.