Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Quickie Activation!

KB9BVN at K-4183
I had about two hours to kill this late afternoon so I grabbed my Activation gear and headed out to K-4183, Atterbury Fish and Wildlife.  I am lucky that I can get there in about 25 minutes.   Once I arrived I saw some other people were in my spot, eating dinner at my picnic table...not a biggie.  I went down the road a bit and found a nice new spot to try out. 

It takes me about 15 minutes to get setup, including raising the vertical on my trailer hitch and attaching the feed line and a couple of radials.  I had a weird pattern tonight on 40 meters, it seems like all my signals were heading due east.  I thought that was interesting but I was hoping for some 7 landers tonight to help my WAS efforts.  None to be had.  

I was running the K2 at 10w this evening and as soon as I spotted my location on the POTA spotting page, I started working contacts within seconds. POTA requires 10 contacts to be considered as a qualified Activation.  I ended up with 18, including one SSB contact to a Park in North Carolina, thanks to Paul K2PMD down at the Fort Raleigh Historic Site (K-0820),

The band was doing pretty well. I was on the air from about 21:20Z to about 22:15Z. Here's a shot of my RBN report.  I started out on 7065 Khz and moved to 7068 Khz for the last 20 mins or so. 


Like I mentioned above, my signals were all heading east tonight, not sure if it was just the way I had my radials laid out or what, but this is a neat QSO map of the evening.  The one in red is the Park to Park with Paul K2PMD.  Working VE9VIC up in New Brunswick was a new province for me, and N1HN in Maine was sounding great! 


Anyway that's it for tonight, it was fun to make a quick run down to the park and activate it again.  This is my 6th activation of Atterbury Fish and Wildlife Area.  Four more and I think I get a certificate! Wall paper baby!

Best 73
de KB9BVN

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Another POTA Milestone Achieved!

About a week and a half ago I found out that I had earned the Arizona Agave Hunter Award from Parks on the Air.  This is for working (hunting) 100 different reference areas (parks). I started hunting on June 22nd of this year and it took me about 2 months to get 100 different parks in the logs.  I have the activators to thank as my contacts were all QRP.  94 were QRP CW and 6 were QRP SSB.  Some of these activators have bionic ears, and for that I am thankful. 


If I get time I am going to write up an article for the QRP Quarterly about working POTA successfully with QRP.  It's been a blast so far!

Best DX to all! 

DE KB9BVN