On a hot and sunny July afternoon, Josh Senefeld, N8VXR, conducted a successful Parks on the Air activation of Fox Lake State Wildlife Area, US-9465.
Josh arrived to Fox Lake around 1720 UTC and parked his car in the southeast corner of the north parking lot off of Brown Road. After turning off his car, Josh decided to setup his station in his trunk and put his antenna in the grass behind the car. His station consisted of his 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, and his CWMorse Pocket Single Paddle Iambic Key. He was on the air by 1730 UTC.
Josh's station.
His antenna.
Having good cell service at the site, Josh had no issues accessing the
POTA.app spotting page and after identifying an empty frequency, he spotted himself and began calling CQ. The first station that called Josh was also his first QRP SSB DX contact with F5PYI from Maclas, France! They both exchanged 52 signal reports at 1730 UTC. His next contact was with W3TRO from Florida at 1735 UTC. Contacts on 20 meters dried up quickly due to the unpredictable band conditions due to a high A-Index.
Moving down to 40 meters, Josh made two contacts with KX4YQ from Virginia at 1748 and then KE8UKX from Ohio at 1754 UTC. After things dried up again, Josh moved to CW on the 20 meter band and hunted VE2JCW from CA-2144 in Quebec for a Park-to-Park QSO at 1805 UTC. Moving to single-sideband, Josh hunted three more Park-to-Park contacts with KC9RF from US-4333 in Wisconsin at 1810 UTC, then NG9B from US-1482, also in Wisconsin at 1816, and then KM4FBY from US-4522 in South Carolina at 1823 UTC.
Siting at eight QSOs and the sun beating down as the clouds cleared, Josh moved back to CW and hunted two more Park-to-Park contacts to make his outing an activation. First up was W8XAL from US-1210 in Colorado at 1833 and then K0WHW from US-2740 in North Carolina at 1838. Josh was very surprised to get North Carolina on 20 meters, but the bands were indeed unpredictable during his activation!
After getting his last QSO, Josh quickly packed up his gear and after everything was packed up, he started his car and got the A/C going. While waiting for his call to cool down, Josh cleaned up a significant amount of litter that was in the nearby grass including a whole pack or more of cigarette butts, two empty packs of cigarettes, a McDonalds Happy Meal, a drive through meal from Wendy's, and more. Needless to say the site looks much better after Josh's visit!
Overall, Josh made ten QSOs, in 1 hour and 8 minutes of operating time. Seven QSOs were single-sideband, three were CW, and all were made made with 5 watts of output power.
The FT-817ND.
His log and key.
A whole bag of trash that Josh picked up from around the site,
Comments
Post a Comment