POTA Activation - Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, April 26, 2024

On a cold April morning, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, his first stop on his hunt to complete the POTA Rover Warthog Award for activating 5 Parks on the Air references in a single UTC day.

Josh arrived to Strouds Run and much like his previous activation he headed for the picnic area by the swim-beach area, he found a van to be parked there so he headed for the Lakeview shelter. After arriving to the shelter at 1340 UTC Josh began unpacking his equipment and then found an optimal place for his antenna. He decided to operate on the 40 meter band, so he attached his Wolf River Coil Sporty Forty coil to the base of the 213" whip. His station consisted of his Icom IC-718, Wolf River Coils 213” vertical whip with a window screen ground plane and Sporty Forty coil, all mounted on a ground spike, and fed with 25’ of RG-8X coax. Josh decided to try to use the newest version of the HAMRS logging application (v 1.0.7) on his Evolve III laptop. He was on the air by 1353 UTC.

Josh's view while operating.

His antenna with Dow Lake in the background.

This outing to Strouds Run really was suppose to serve as a testing ground for Josh's IC-718, as he tried to activate A.W. Marion State Park, US-1931, the previous day and failed to get a single contact. The story of that attempt can be found here.

Josh decided to start his morning by hunting a Park-to-Park contact with KN4NBJ from US-9935 in Virginia at 1354 UTC. After that Josh found 7.266 MHz to be free and clear so he started calling CQ after spotting himself of the POTA website. His first contact while running the frequency came from WM2R in New York and then N4RDJ from Alabama, both at 1357 UTC. Josh then had a steady run of four contacts back-to-back with KD9UVK, KO4ZOG, KA4GSR, and W1FRX in the next two minutes. He had to work a little bit before getting another contact, but eventually W4GA came back to Josh's CQ from Georgia at 1403 UTC. Josh then left his frequency briefly after a few minutes of calling with no response to get a Park-to-Park QSO with K3USI from US-4567 in Virginia at 1406 UTC. Josh's last two QSOs were with KN4NGK from Tennessee at 1410 UTC and then N3COB at the very end from Maryland at 1411 UTC.

After finishing up with 11 QSOs and confirming that his IC-718 was in proper working condition, Josh decided that since he had no other commitments for the rest of the day to go on a rove! Josh had been meaning to try for a 5 park rove in Athens after a failed attempt in March while in Cincinnati. So off he went to Utah Ridge Pond in the Wayne National Forrest, US-4521!

Overall, Josh made 11 QSOs, 2 of them being Park-to-Park, in 17 minutes of operating time. All his QSOs were single-sideband and made with 50 watts of output power.