POTA Activation - Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, March 23, 2024

On an cold and windy March evening, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted a successful late shift Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, US-1994.

Josh arrived at the Lakeview Shelter around 2300 UTC and started to unpack his gear from his car. After a few trips to and from the car, Josh started to find a good spot to set up his Wolf River Coils 213" whip. Josh had never activated from this site before and decided to go out and onto a small peninsula south of the shelter. After finding an adequate spot, he attached the antenna to the ground spike, laid out his window screen ground plane, and still used the same trusty sticks from his first activation at Strouds Run. He also retracted about 6" of the whip to get close to where he wanted to operate. After attaching his window screen to the ground spike Josh attached the coax to his radio and found an empty spot and checked his SWR using the meter on his IC-718. Much like before, he found fantastic SWR of 1.5:1 or lower across the whole 20m band. Josh was on the air by 2317 UTC.

Josh's setup before packing up.

The view of Dow Lake before getting on the air.

The same view before packing up.

Josh found a clear frequency (14.275 MHz), spotted himself on the POTA website, and started calling "CQ Parks on the Air." Josh did notice an unusually loud noise floor of about S6 from this particular site, however the large G4 geomagnetic storm was approaching. After less than a minute of calling CQ, Josh's first contact came from KF7HP from Arizona and his second from KC1OT in Connecticut, both at 2318 UTC. His first Park-to-Park QSO came from KD9KJC from US-4264 in Wisconsin. After his first handful of QSOs, Josh started noticing some QRM from about 2 KHz up from him, this particular station was not there when Josh started calling CQ, however Josh still tried to make the best of it. Josh did manage to get a few more Park-to-Park QSOs during his run, his next being from K3VHP from US-1213 in Colorado at 2325 UTC, then AF5KU and KI5WRE both from US-8123 in Oklahoma at 2327 and 2328 respectively. Those two were followed up by KX4JN from US-2516 in Minnesota at 2328 UTC. After logging 25 contacts, the QRM got the best of Josh and he decided to move up the band to 14.289.

After checking to make sure that the frequency was not in use, Josh respotted  himself on the POTA website. After about a 4 minute break in-between QSOs, Josh's next contact was from N9CDX in Illinois at 2336. A few contacts later, Josh got a call from Ray, ND8L from Florida, they chatted for awhile since he commented on Josh having great audio, Josh told him about his setup and then Ray asked Josh how he sounded, he also had great audio and was getting ready for the March 24th SSB Sprint event hosted by the ARRL from 0000 UTC to 0359 UTC. Josh's last contact was with W7LDE from Washington state at 2359 UTC. The sun didn't have much light left, the wind was picking up, Josh was getting cold, and he still wanted some light so he could pack up. Josh went QRT and said 73 to all still listening!

Overall, Josh made 65 QSOs, 5 of them being Park-to-Park, in 41 minutes of operating time. All of his QSOs were SSB and were made with 50 watts of output power.