POTA Activation - Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, April 20, 2024

On a chilly and windy April afternoon, two members of the Athens County Amateur Radio Association, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, and Eric McFadden, WD8RIF, conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, US-1994.

Josh arrived to Strouds Run at about 1755 UTC after passing Eric, who had decided to come bicycle-portable, on the road and started looking for a spot to them to activate from. He knew that the Bulldog Shelter had been reserved and after passing it notice several cars in the parking lot and plenty of people under the shelter. He then decided to go check the Bobcat and Lakeview shelters near the swim-beach area. After driving by both, he found them to be occupied with other groups as well. However, he did notice that his backup spot, right near where Strouds Run Road meets State Park Road (South), was free of any cars and people. 

As he was able to park, Eric had turned on to State Park Road, saw Josh parking and then turned around to meet Josh. After meeting up, the two unpacked their gear and begun to assemble their stations. Josh assembled his station consisting of an Icom IC-718 for the transceiver, Wolf River Coils 213” vertical whip with a window screen ground plane, mounted on a ground spike, and fed with 25’ of RG-8X coax. Eric’s station consisted of an Elecraft KX2 transceiver, Tufteln 35' EFRW antenna mounted on a  Goture Red Fox Super Hard 720 carbon-fiber attached to his bicycle, three counterpoise wires, and an in-line coax choke in-between the KX2 and his antenna.

This activation was special for the both of them as it was Josh’s 10th activation of Strouds Run and Eric’s 100th, earning him the Eagle's Nest Repeat Offender Activator Award! It also was the Spring Support Your Parks Weekend, meaning that they both had earned the Support Your Parks Weekend Activator and Hunter Awards for Spring 2024.

Josh's antenna setup on the small high point.

His gear all packed up.

Josh had an interesting start to his activation because of an activation attempt that didn’t yield a single QSO on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Josh had planned to activate Lake Logan State Park, US-1969, however, right as he was about to start, his IC-718 had fallen inside his car, where Josh was hoping to activate from, and the screen had cracked and become unreadable. After disassembling the IC-718, Josh noticed no internal damage, besides the mic connector being slightly angled from the fall, however, the mic still keyed the radio. Josh couldn’t see what frequency he was on, but he could still type in frequencies via the keypad. 

Josh “spun”, more like typed around the 20-meter band and noticed horrible band conditions despite the high SFI number for the day. Then Eric began operating on 20-meters, so Josh retuned his antenna to the 17-meter band and began calling CQ at 1830 UTC to no avail. Then Eric switched to the 15-meter band so Josh decided to switch back down to 20 and see if he could get some contacts and luckily, he did! His first contact came from KJ5CIK in Louisiana at 1842 UTC after 12 minutes of trying to make a contact. Next up was KJ4UGO, a Park-to-Park contact from US-1042 in Alabama, also at 1842 UTC. Josh’s next two Park-to-Park QSOs would come right after one another, first was KB9KBT from US-4125 in Illinois at 1852, then KG2MM from US-3648 in Florida at 1857 UTC. 

A little Bit Later at 1901 Josh got a call a Canadian! VE1BQC in New Brunswick, and then his 10th contacts to make it an activation from VE4QZ from Manitoba at 1902. Josh managed to get a few more Park-to-Park QSOs while running the frequency, W9BDX and KB9RUG from US-4133 in Illinois at 1904 UTC and KI5ZXD from US-3051 in Texas at 1907 UTC. Things started to slow down even more after Josh’s contact with KD0WTT who was mobile in Kansas at 1911 and didn’t get a call back from his CQ for several minutes.

He then decided to hunt some more Park-to-Park contacts to get up to 20 QSOs during his activation, making him 3 QSOs short to have 500 logged from Strouds Run, halfway to the Kilo Award. He Found W5MRC, the McKinney Amateur Radio Club, from US-2991 in Texas at 1914 UTC, then three operators in one park, N5VOF, KJ5CMP, and WD5JR all in US-11245 in Oklahoma at 1917 UTC to round out his activation.

Overall, Josh made 20 QSOs, 10 of them being Park-to-Park, in 35 minutes of operating time. All his QSOs were single-sideband and made with 50 watts of output power. Eric had made 13 QSOs, all his were CW and made with 5 watts of output power. Eric’s report of his activation can be found on his website under the “Event Reports” tab.