POTA Activation - Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, April 29, 2024

On a warm April afternoon, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, marking his 15th activation of the park on his hunt to complete the Oasis Repeat Offender Award for 20 activations from the same Parks on the Air entity. This activation also included Josh's 700th QSO from Strouds Run in his hunt for the Kilo Awards for making 1000 QSOs from the same Parks on the Air Entity.

Prior to this activation, Josh had 14 successful activations of Strouds Run with 683 QSOs, after this activation he now has 15 activations with 702 QSOs.

Josh arrived to Strouds Run and planned to activate from the picnic area by the swim-beach area, the area was empty so Josh backed in his car and started to unpack at 1926 UTC. Josh decided to give the 20 meter band a try due to the mildly improved solar conditions as compared to a few days prior. He began to setup his station consisting of his Icom IC-718 (replacement screen is in Ohio!), Wolf River Coils 213” vertical whip with a window screen ground plane, all mounted on a ground spike, and fed with 25’ of RG-8X coax. He was on the air by 1936 UTC.

Josh's station.

His view to the right of the picnic table.

His antenna before packing up.

After finding a clear frequency on 20 meters (14.307 MHz) Josh spotted himself using the APSPOT SMS spotting tool as Josh had cell service, however, the POTA.app website did not want to load on this particular day. After getting himself spotted, he began calling CQ and two minutes later at 1938 UTC, Josh got his first and second contacts of the day with K4ZEE and W4DEG, both in Florida. Then Josh got his first DX contact in a long time with F5PYI from Maclas, France at 1939 UTC. Josh had two stations call him next, both at 1940 UTC, first up was KI5WRQ and then N5WQ both from Texas. Then things started to slow down just a tad. At 1953, Josh made his only Park-to-Park QSO of the activation with W5MEF who was activating US-0548 in Texas, he also was Josh's 700th contact from Strouds Run! Then things really started to slow down and Josh didn't get another QSO until 1958 UTC with KF4ONH from Florida and then K5JTB from Arkansas. 

Then Josh decided to see if switching to 40 meters would get him some more QSOs. He attached his Wolf River Coils Sporty Forty and found 7.209 MHz to be clear and spotted himself at 2005 UTC. Unfortunately, 40 meters was a bust and didn't yield any contacts. 

Before packing up and calling it a day, Josh decided to play around with his 213" whip and wanted to write down how many sections he needed to collapse for it to be resonate on the 40, 20, 17, 15, 12, 10, and 6 meter bands. After making note of each resonate point, then Josh decided to pack up and head home.

Overall, Josh made 19 QSOs, 1 of them being Park-to-Park, in 21 minutes of operating time. All his QSOs were single-sideband and made with 50 watts of output power.