POTA Activation - Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, May 1, 2024

On a warm but breezy May afternoon, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, marking his 16th activation of the park on his hunt to complete the Oasis Repeat Offender Awards for 20 activations from the same Parks on the Air entity. Josh has also been hunting for the Kilo Award for making 1000 QSOs from the same Parks on the Air Entity. During this activation, Josh earned the Stenogyne Kanehoana Hunter Award for hunting 400 unique Parks on the Air references!

Prior to this activation, Josh had 15 successful activations of Strouds Run with 702 QSOs, after this activation he now has 16 activations with 750 QSOs.

Josh arrived to Strouds Run and decided to go up to the Horsemen's Area off of Scatter Ridge Road. Paul Schultz, WD8SCZ, had recommended to Josh to try activating from the site during the 2024 Athens Hamfest so he figured why not! Josh arrived to the site around 1700 UTC and began to setup his station his Icom IC-718 (still with its busted screen), 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 1714 UTC.

Josh's station.

His antenna setup.

Pictures from around the parking area.

Josh found that he had excellent cell service at the site, most likely due to the fact that the Horsemen's area is a good 200 feet higher in elevation as compared to the Dow Lake area of the park. Josh took a look through the spotting page and found K7SIG was activating US-6120 in Wyoming. This is one of the few states that Josh needed for his POTA Worked All States award and after tuning to the station he found it to be coming in at a strong 57 signal. He had no problem making the contact and received a 58 signal report at 1714 UTC. Josh then went to find an empty frequency on the 20 meter band and found 14.273 to be clear, he spotted himself and got his first contact on the frequency, a Park-to-Park with W3ARD from US-0975 Texas at 1720 UTC. His next Park-to-Park contacts would be from just a few hours north of him with KB8SHH and KB8VON from US-1936, Blue Rock State Park just south of Zanesville, Ohio at 1726 UTC. Josh's next set of back-to-back Park-to-Park QSOs came at 1731 with KF0AWL from US-9329 in Iowa and KO4CDM from US-1909 in Florida. This was shortly followed up by a little DX to Spain with EA1BUL at 1734, unfortunately he was only coming in about a 22 but they made it work! His next Park-to-Park QSO was with N5BLM from US-2251 in Mississippi at 1751.

Josh decided to try switching to the 15 meter band next as he stopped getting replies to his CQ call. He had overall noticed a decent amount of QSB on the band, however, most stations would end up coming back up enough to make the contact. The 15 meter band wasn't too productive in terms of QSO count, however, he did have a nice ragchew with KK5XU from Texas.

Josh went back down to 20 meters and started hunting Park-to-Park QSOs, first up was K0DCR from US-1214 in Colorado at 1807, then KQ4EZN from US-4625 in Florida at 1810, next was WD8ORB from US-0682 and US-8313 in North Carolina at 1813, then KO4IFY from US-7861 in Georgia at 1817, and then he found K7SIG, now in a different park, US-3295 in Wyoming at 1818. Josh went back to his old frequency of 14.273 and found it to still be clear, so he checked if it was in use before spotting himself on the POTA website to try to get up to 48 contacts for the activation. His first contact was with K7OTA from Kansas at 1822. Then he got a call from 3 operators doing a joint activation of US-4625, NY9G, KI4PIL, and KG2MM at 1824. In one activation alone, Josh hand hunted Jennings State Forest, US-4625, four times! 

Next band up was 40 meters so Josh attached his WRC Sporty Forty Coil and started off by hunting KE8PZN in US-9740 in West Virginia at 1833. Josh was still trying to make that 48 QSO mark so he could end up with a total of 750 contacts from Strouds Run, so he found 7.224 to not be in use and respotted himself. First up was N3APC from Pennsylvania at 1835, then a very familiar operator, W0CGC from Tennessee at 1836, next was VE3GRG from Ontario at 1837, and K4CAE from South Carolina at 1838. Then Josh got another set of back-to-back Park-to-Park contacts, this time with KN4FKS from US-2187 in Georgia at 1839 and then KB3CVO from US-5471 in Pennsylvania.

Overall, Josh made 48 QSOs, 19 of them being Park-to-Park, in 1 hour and 26 minutes of operating time. All his QSOs were single-sideband and made with 50 watts of output power.