Missuri Parks
Another trip and another two park activations attempted
Equipment updates
I decided to pull the plug on the Xiegu g90. The 857D is a great radio and served me well when doing RV POTA type activations but with my primary mode of travel being airlines these days. I thought the investment into the g90 would be a great options.
Truthfully, I really wanted to pickup a KX2, but with supply limitations there, I figured I’d just grab the g90 and wait and see how it all flushes out. So far I’m fairly happy with this setup.
Sticking with the buddiestick and the EFHW, for now on this trip, I did manage to get a much smaller key in the form of a SP4|SOTA/POTA paddle. I’ll admit, I do really like this little paddle. I had experienced the phantom (extra) dits here and there but I’m also not a ggreat CW op so, maybe it’s me. If I do ever get on the air with this during an activation, you’ll probably not hear “TU” from me because the U is turning into an “F”.
Park number 1 K-1782 | Rock Bridge Memorial Park
Our first stop was a short activation. We didn’t have much time due to just getting off of work and dust approaching. I initially started setting up the buddie stick with it’s clamp on the picnic table, however, with severe wind, this became an issue. Long story short, RIP antenna whip.
I started to deploy the EFHW after cleaning up the now broken buddie stick but ultimatly didn’t think I’d make an activation and spent the remainder of the time at this park side copying Chris again.
Truthfully, I was a little out of it. I hadn’t been feeling all that great that day. I had a bit of a heachach to begin with and I found it less stressful to just listen to Chris operate CW.
Finally, success
K-4840|Reifsnider State Forest is an interesting little park. You don’t find hills with no guard rails much around my neck of the woods, so the drive in was interesting in and of itself. Did I mention the stream crossing?
We ended up finding a spot at the end of the road, where it turns into very well marked private propery. This spot seemed to the turn around point for anyone who was checking the park out beyond the main parking areas or the shooting range.
Having broken the Buddiestick, I deployed the EFHW into a nearby tree and fashioned it in such a way that it wouldn’t snag any passing vehicles, this also gave it some decent height. By the way, a throw line and throw bag are amazing for these deployments.
Getting plugged in I set up on 17 Meters to get away from the contest traffic. I managed to make contacts with TX, AL, KY, and as far north as NH all with decent signal reports. There were also a great number of other POTA stations out there and we made quite a few Park-to-Parks QSOs.
Still waiting on the ordered band pass filters, we played it safe and switched out operating regularly. For just shy of 3 hours we both managed fiarly well, CW still doing better of course.
Summary and some goals
When I get home, I’m going to look into building a smaller antenna than this 8010. It’s quite long for the operations I’m doing and is a little unneccessary.
As I keep saying CW really needs to be a priority for me. I’ve always wanted to operate CW. I’ve spent years learning, then failing to follow through, then trying again. I’d say I’ve got about half of the characters down at a instantly recignizable level, the other half takes me a second or two for it to “click”. So with that, I’m off to do some CW practice!