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

On a pleasant April evening, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, US-1994.

Josh arrived to Strouds Run at about 2252 UTC and found the Bulldog Shelter to be occupied by two fishers, so he continued on and found the picnic area by the swim-beach area to be unoccupied. Josh parked the car and began setting up his station consisting of an Icom IC-718 (with a busted screen, post here) 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. Josh was trying out the Ham2K Portable Logger logging program on his iPad during this activation, as compared to his usual N3FJP Amateur Contact Log on his Evolve III Maestro. Josh was on the air by 2308 UTC.

Josh's station.

His Wolf River Coils 213" whip.

Josh decided at the last minute before sitting down to operate to attach his Sport Forty Coil and operate exclusively on the 40-meter band for this activation. He throughly enjoys the band, however, he's been doing a lot of 20-meters because of the fantastic bands conditions and DX that he's been getting as of late. After the coil was attached, Josh had to type around the band like he did last time, due to his IC-718's broken screen. He thought he found an empty frequency towards the bottom of the band, however he was notified that there was a net just above him. Josh then moved towards the upper end of the band and found 7.266 MHz to be empty with not much around. Josh's first contact came from KQ4GTH in Tennessee at 2308 UTC, followed up with KO4SXH in North Carolina and KB2QGZ in New York, both at 2309 UTC. At this point Josh was off and already had a pile-up to work through. In his first 10 minutes of operating, Josh already had 19 QSOs! One of his most notable contacts from his activation was with W8BI, the Dayton Amateur Radio Association! Josh has visited the W8BI clubhouse before to meet with fellow hams to work on Motorola and EF Johnson equipment, so it was nice to get a call from the operator working their club station.

Josh's first Canadian contact came from VE1RPX from Nova Scotia at 2322 UTC. Another notable QSO came at 2332 UTC with KJ8MRH, Mark from West Chester, OH. West Chester is close to where Josh's house in Cincinnati is and the two had worked before. Their most recent contact, prior to this one, was during the Solar Eclipse QSO Party where the two managed to make contact on the 20-meter band from the same grid square! Josh's only Park-to-Park contact came from AE0SR from US-4036 in Nebraska at 2333 UTC. At this point Josh was well aware of the rain coming his way, wasn't a crazy big storm, but a decent shower nonetheless, he was notified of this during his QSO with W8BI and Josh was checking his phone to see how close it was. For the time being, it was getting darker and windy, but he pushed on. His last two contacts to get to 50 QSOs for the evening were both from Canadians, VE3SRW and VA3ALQ, both in Ontario, at 2338 and 2339 UTC respectively.

After packing up, Josh drove around the swim-beach area to look at Dow Lake and to connect his iPad to his phone's hotspot to try uploading his log straight from the iPad. It turned out to be very simple and Josh was overall impressed with the Ham2K Portable Logger, he hopes to use it again soon!

Overall, Josh made 50 QSOs, 1 of them being Park-to-Park, in 31 minutes of operating time. A new rate record for Josh! All his QSOs were single-sideband and made with 50 watts of output power. 

The view of Dow Lake from the swim-beach area.

Josh operating right before his last two QSOs.