POTA Activation - Strouds Run State Park, US-1994, June 9, 2024

On a pleasant June afternoon, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Strouds Run State Park, US-1994. This was Josh's 20th activation of the park, earning him the Oasis Activator Repeat Offender Award 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.

Prior to this activation, Josh had 19 successful activations of Strouds Run with 875 QSOs, after this activation he now has 20 activations with 926 QSOs.

Josh arrived to Strouds Run around 1935 UTC and he found the picnic tables by the swim beach area to be unoccupied. He parked his car and then started to setup his station consisting of his Icom IC-718, 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 1745 UTC.

His operating position.

The 213" whip.

Josh's activation technically started after the UTC switch on June 8th while Josh and Cade, KC3EKE, activated the park. Before packing up the two made Park-to-Park contacts with each other on the 2m and 70cm bands. Moving back to June 9th proper, Josh found lack luster cell service at the site and used the APSPOT service to spot himself via SMS. He started off on 14.263 MHz and began calling CQ, his first contact came a few minutes later with W1WWA from Louisiana. After a few more stations called Josh, he started to get some interference from a station parked right above him, so he found 14.324 to be clear and respotted himself. He managed to get two stations on his frequency, VE9AJ and W4MPX around 1958 UTC. After a few minutes of calling CQ with no answer, Josh tried to load the POTA.app website on his phone and it managed to load! He decided to take a short break and hunt some Park-to-Park QSOs, his first being with W0ZC from US-7417 in Kansas and then N1CCC from US-0831 in Missouri. Josh then found another clear frequency, 14.273, and repotted and started calling CQ again as he had still not activated the park, he manged to get four contacts before the calls dried up. 

At this point, Josh had noticed that the band conditions were starting to change for the worse and from this point forward, the signal strength of each station he worked significantly dropped. So Josh went back and found two more Park-to-Parks, K5MPD from US-2787 in Oklahoma and KO4KP from US-10513 in Arizona, this particular QSO was really stretching what 20 meters was capable of during his activation. Josh then moved down to 40 meters hoping the band would allow him to work more stations as he at least wanted to hit the 900 QSO mark during this activation. Josh spotted himself on 7.198 and started calling CQ and immediately got a Park-to-Park QSO with KC3VIG from US-8891 in Pennsylvania at 2025 UTC. Josh finally found some traction on 40 meters and worked a long run of roughly 20 stations, including two more Park-to-Parks with N8JJO from US-3305 in Michigan and KE8VVN from US-1943, Cowan Lake State Park in Ohio! Josh also hunted a Park-to-Park with NO4NLL from US-7450 from Georgia at 2059 UTC.

After surpassing the 900 QSO mark and still having plenty of free time, Josh removed his WRC Sporty Forty coil and went back to 20 meters to hunt a Park-to-Park with K5MPD, now in US-6353 in Oklahoma. Then he found yet another clear frequency on 20 meters, 14.313 and started calling CQ for the last time. During this run he worked 12 stations including a Park-to-Park with WD5MAT from US-4423 in Texas. After siting at 47 QSOs and wanted to reach 925 in total, Josh hunted 2 more Park-to-Park contacts, both 2-fers from Canadian stations! First up was VE9CF in CA-5261 and CA-0024 in New Brunswick and then VE1SK from CA-0475 and CA-5082 almost 15 minutes after his last Park-to-Park because band conditions were so up and down he couldn't hear any other activators well enough to make the Park-to-Park QSOs work.

Overall, Josh made 51 QSOs, 17 of them being Park-to-Park, in 1 hour and 58 minutes of operating time. All but two of his QSOs were single-sideband and made with 50 watts of output power, the other two were made using FM and 5 watts of output power.