OR | Detroit Lake State Recreation Area | US-9143

Well, another activation is in books.

This was an amazing trip. The weather was a near perfect 45 to 50 degress (okay, maybe that’s perfect for me), the area was quiet, and the views.

This trip I took a bit of a detor from my usual setup. Ordinarily, I’d be operating with my Icom 705 and EFHW, however, I’m actually on a longer trip that includes an island destination (I swear, I’ll finish that article eventually). ** Okay, future me here. I never got around to that article but the after article is coming… soon.

So for this trip I wanted to bring along a larger antenna and a bit more power. The trip to Detroit Lake was a great way to spend an afternoon and test the setup.

The equipment

• Icom 7000
• DX Commander Expedition (40, 20, 17, 15, 10)
• 2 9aH Bioenno Batteries
• And even my Heil Headset

Antenna setup

I’ll be honest that I’ve only set this antenna up once. It’s fairly easy to setup, but having only done it once and not considering the rocky conditions here in Oregon, I may have underestimed things just a bit.

I couldn’t get a stake more than an inch or two into the ground before hitting rock. To be expected, of course. I eventually just ended up tieing the mast to two trees and two very convienctly placed logs from a recent camp fire.

Truthfully, the antenna was more or less leaning off over a cliff and being held from swaying too much in the wind by the tree lines. Anchoring in an ordinary fashion just wasn’t going to happen.

Spotting… and not cell service

This was my first real experience with no cell service while out POTAing. Fortuantly, I’d heard about SotaMat a while back and had been reading up on it. Since I was with another operator, who was driving, I was able to get setup on the drive before loosing cell service.

Unfortunatly, I didn’t read the directions well enough and made a mistake when trying to spot myself. Truthfully, this was all on me. I did manage to get spotted though apparently my cell carrier has worse service than his… something to thing about.

Contacts

Operations started REALLY slowly. Making a few contacts here and there with truly terrible signal reports. Eventually I did actually pickup Japan and then a few more with loud 59 signals. Anyone in the US seemed to have a hard time hearing me but the DX was hearing me well!

After playing around a bit I decided to get up and explore a bit. I came back to the radio and 15 meters just seemed to be dead. I was hoping things would change a bit as it seemed like the band was trying to open. Randomly 3 or 4 people would call or I’d hear other stations, then 30 seconds later they were gone. Unfortunatly, when I returned to the rig, it wasn’t much better.

Let’s give 40 a try

Well, 40 was, disappointing at best.

With only a few minutes left in the day before this would count as a new activation (and require another 10 contacts to be an activation) I wanted to see how 40 played on the DX Commander.

Unfortunatly, humanity disappointed me. I had found 3 different frequencies, asked if the frequency was in use, listened, asked again (3 times each) and began calling CQ. Within about 30/45 seconds of beginning my CQ runs, someone with much higher power and possibly attenuated ears was talking over me and paying no mind to “freqency is in use”.

The truly sad part of about this all is the final frequnecy before I gave up was completly silent and immediatly after my first CQ call, someone began to open a net right at 00:00 UTC.

I’d be hard pressed to believe that all of these operators didn’t hear me. I’d be forgiving enough to understand 1 or maybe 2 but there is no way that net control didn’t hear me, or someone waiting to check in.

I guess that’s just 40 meters.

In any case, I ended the activation with just 21 contacts. Ether way it was a good time with good views and a chance to get out of the city for a while!

73'