New POTA Initiative

I won’t say that I’ve been “out” of radio, I’ve just been distracted recently.

Being busy is life and it happens but recently I’ve had a few thoughts of getting back at it again. My rig has sat for quite a while collecting dust, and I’m down to 1 antenna at the QTH, the two others being down for some bothersome issues I still need to investigate.

Truthfully, the shack is kind of a mess. The “shack” is really a converted garage and while it’s half insulated, it’s still subjected to the outside temperature quite a bit.

A new hobby within

Last year I started a new job, or I should say a new step in my career. This position requires a great deal of travel and I had thought for a few moments about getting into POTA and possibly SOTA while on the road. We visit some interesting place & parks are everywhere.

I hadn’t thought much about it to be honest, more of a passing thought, until mid conversation with a team member (we travel with a team) someone informated me that another member of our team was also a ham. The fact that this small team contained to licensed amateur operations was quite a surprise to me. I even said as much and told him he was full of… you guess the rest.

Well as it turns out our little group does have two “radio nerds” as we’re now known to the rest of the team. That’s okay though, everyone has their own hobbies.

Activating our first park

So the planning began. I being a wanna be CW operator hadn’t had much success in learning code in any operable sense. Although, I did pass the 5 wpm code test back when it was required. I think that 5wpm code test was my downfall for being able to actually operate CW on air, maybe I’ll write about that in the future.

Chris, on the other hand is an avid CW operator, so we were determined to get on the air. The first step was a CW contact from coast to coast. I live on the each coast and Chris is over on what I call the left coast (no insult intended)

We managed to make a CW contact after the trip where we both figured out we were hams and a began vigerously diving back into learning CW again. This time with a goal in mind. I wanted to activate parks on CW. I haven’t accomplished that goal yet but I’m working towards in.

My Equipment

Being a previous POTA operator (one park, years ago) I had a few ideas for what I really wanted. Keeping in mind that we were flying to our next destination and atleast for me, it was a long flight (left coast anyone). I tried to keep is as light as possible.

Taking along my Yeasu 857D, a battery I picked up at HRO (9Ah), and I even brought my key (a bencher, something TSA didn’t appriciate at first. Once they looked at it all was well though)

I brought along my Chamilion CHA LEFS 8010, an EFHW. It’s big and rather heavy for QRP type work but it’s pretty effective. I’d used it previously at a park but the difference then was my park exploit was with my RV, now it’s all being packed and transported via car and airline travel. Changes your perspective a bit as well as my buddie stick vertical.

The lack of success and learning a few things

My first activation was not what I expected. Initially when we arrived at K-8325|Millerton Lake State Recreation Area, I setup my buddistick on 10 meters. Chris had taken 20 Meter CW with his magnetic loop antenna (something that works amazingly well by the way)

At first things seemed to be going well. I made a contact fairly quick but 10 meters seemed to be a challenge at only 20 watts on the 847D. I jumped up to 15 meters and attempted several contacts p2p, to no avail. At this point I decided to try and put up my EFHW. There wasn’t a lot of trees around, but one there was big enough.

After loads and calling CQ and some other challenges, I decided to call it quits for the day with no succssful activation.

Lessons learned.

First lesson was band pass filters were going to be neccessary. Chris and I were alternating a bit to keep from interferring with each other. The second was that this radio was kind of a pain to lug around and I really wanted a smaller wire antenna.

I have no real need for 80 meters currently and figure I can probably dump quite a bit off this antenna setup if I cut that back, more on that in another post.

The most important, I think, is I really need to get on CW. This is still a work in progress, but I am progressing.

Moving on

We decided to give it another go, this time finding K-4466|Sierra National Forest. The drive in was interesting for me because of the windy, switchback roads. We’ve got windy hills in PA, where we visit friends, but these roads were just more interesting. Combine that with just a different type of woods/forest and it was a good outing.

I immediatly deployed the EFHW and we began operating. I started thing off and managed a fiarly reasonable signal reports into AZ, WA, TX, and UT. CA is a given. These contacts took place on 15 and 20 meters, again on SSB.

I then jumped on 20 CW to get my first POTA CW contact with Chris, just because, why not. I’m fairly certain I butchered everything I sent though and to be honest other than signal report, if he said anything else, I’d be surprised.

Chris had another successful CW activation & we packed up.

Summary

So far I’ve been impressed with Chris’s activations & that mag loop!

As for me, I’m still looking into other antenna options and maybe a new radio. CW is still something I think I need to focus on and get down. I sat with Chris a little bit during the last activation and “side copied” call signs, reports, and states. I think I was fairly successful in this but with much room for improvement needed.