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

On a humid June afternoon, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted his first successful QRP Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, US-1994. Josh has been hunting for the Kilo Award for making 1000 QSOs from the same Parks on the Air Entity, prior to this activation, Josh had 926 QSOs from Strouds Run, after this activation he now 936 QSOs.

Josh arrived to Strouds Run at 2040 UTC and noticed that the Bulldog shelter was empty and had no cars in the parking lot. He parked his car at the shelter and then started to setup his station consisting of his new to him Yeasu FT-817ND, Wolf River Coils 213” vertical whip with a window screen ground plane, all mounted on a ground spike, and fed with RG-58 coax. He was on the air by 2057 UTC.

Josh's station.

His antenna setup near Dow Lake.

Since Josh was still learning his way around the FT-817 as it arrived the same day, he decided to hunt Park-to-Park QSOs to get his ten contacts. Cell service at the Bulldog shelter was weaker than normal, but after walking towards the car and back he managed to pick up one bar of signal. Band conditions were also especially rough so hunting station that Josh could hear made more sense then having people find his QRP signal. Starting off on 20 meters, Josh found Michael, KB9VBR, of YouTube Fame at two parks US-1439 and US-4244 in Wisconsin and completed their QSO at 2057 UTC.

Josh then decided to switched to CW in order to get his feet wet with using CW while activating, he found WI0S at US-2504 in Minnesota and made contact with him at 2119. Next up was W9MIC who was activating US-0660 in Florida, they completed their QSO at 2122 UTC. At 2126, Josh found KA0CSW activating US-6465 in Minnesota, the bands at this point were getting worse and worse. Josh managed to make one more CW QSO, also his first with a Canadian, he found VE7VAK from CA-4304 on Vancouver Island. This also marked Josh's longest CW and QRP QSO at a distance of over 2,000 miles! 

At this point a light rain shower had started and Josh almost gave up hope and packed up. A few people had also arrived at the shelter and Josh thought that they were there to use it, but it turns out they were just walking around Dow Lake. Even though they didn't approach Josh, they stopped for a minute to listen to him operator CW before driving away. After seeing that it was only very light rain and it wouldn't last long and his curios friends listening, Josh pushed on.

Switching back to sideband, Josh found KC0QNA and KF0FIK from US-0362 in Minnesota, he had tried to hunt them earlier, however after removing his DYC-817 speech compression unit, he was able to make contact with the pair of activators at 2233 UTC. Josh will have to troubleshoot the DYC-817 at a later date. Josh had noticed that a few stations from Pennsylvania had hopped on 40 meters His ninth contact was with AA3K from US-1347 in Pennsylvania at 2245 UTC. After two full hours at the site, Josh made his tenth QSO with KC3UYI from US-8996, also in Pennsylvania at 2246. Due to the humidity increasing, Josh quickly packed up and headed to his car to get the A/C going.

Overall, Josh made ten QSOs, all ten of them being Park-to-Park, in 1 hour and 49 minutes of operating time. Six QSOs were single-sideband and four were CW and made with 5 watts of output power.