POTA Activation - Strouds Run State Park, K-1994, March 19, 2024

On an extremely windy March afternoon, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, K-1994, after a very long and stressful day.

Josh arrived at the Bulldog Shelter around 2130 UTC and started to unpack his gear from his car. After everything was under the shelter, Josh then began to start setting up his Wolf River Coils 213" whip. He was able to find the same spot where he put his spike the day prior and started to attach the antenna to the ground spike. He then laid out his window screen ground plane and used the same sticks from the previous day. Josh also retracted about 5" of the whip to get the lowest part of the dip around 14.27 MHz where he was hoping to operate. After attaching his alligator clips and coax, he put it on his NanoVNA and once again found fantastic SWR of 1.5:1 or lower across the whole 20m band. Josh was on the air by 2140 UTC, making this his faster solo setup.

Josh's operating position.

The wonderful view from the activation site.

Josh found a clear frequency (14.263 MHz), spotted himself on the POTA website, and started calling "CQ Parks on the Air." After only about two CQ calls his first QSO came from N6HU in California at 2141, followed up by KC1PHZ in Rhode Island and KD9KJC in Wisconsin at 2142 UTC. A few contacts later Josh got a call from N5SCR who gave Josh a 59+ 10db signal report! 20m was just on fire this Tuesday evening as Josh just had a huge pileup of stations one after another. Josh's first two Park-to-Park QSOs came back-to-back! First was AB2SG from K-1214 in Colorado at 2148 UTC and then KB4JOY from K-8327 in Florida at 2149 UTC. Another Park-to-Park QSO came at 2157, KF0CGP from K-2299 in Iowa! At 2202 Josh got a call from KC0ZXZ, Mick, also from Iowa. He told Josh that he had just be in Cincinnati, Josh's hometown, about a week ago and they chatted for awhile about Mick's trip before finally saying "73"! In-between a little lull of contacts, IW1FVP came out of no where! This was Josh's 3rd real DX contact as a Parks on the Air activator and he received a 55 signal report from Santhia, Italy.

After another lull of minutes of calling CQ with no one answering, Josh checked the POTA spotting page and didn't see many activators, so he figured that most people who were hunting had already worked him. Josh decided to mark himself as QRT and he decided to go hunting to get some more Park-to-Park contacts. His first was with K8MRD of the Ham Radio Tube YouTube channel, he was at K-3019 in Texas, next was KK7NLA who was at 3 parks in Washington state, K-3256, K-4572, and K-0731, the contact took a while as they both were fairly weak signals trying to work across the lower 48, but they got it done. He was followed up by K5UPR from K-1076 in Arkansas, then K6ATY from K-4566 in Nevada! Josh needed Nevada for his Worked All States award for Parks on the Air so he was super happy to be able to make the contact, he even received a 59 signal report! His last two contacts of the activation was with W5KZJ from K-2991 in Texas, he was Josh's 100th QSO from Strouds Runs, and then K2IW from K-5196 in New York. It was about time for Josh to pack up at this point so Josh could make the monthly meeting on the Athens County Amateur Radio Association, thankfully it wasn't a far drive away!

Overall, Josh made 48 QSOs, 9 of them being Park-to-Park, in 51 minutes of operating time. All of his QSOs were SSB and were made with 50 watts of output power.