Snow finally Melted! Time to POTA!

I don't know about you, but this winter has been a difficult one. For one we've had more snow this winter than we've had for the last five or six years, then to make it even more miserable it's been below zero more than several times.  Cabin fever is a terrible thing.  As you may remember I retired the 2nd of January, in the middle of winter....what else did I expect?  We had about a foot of snow land here almost three weeks ago and the the temperatures dove down below zero for better than a week.  

Today, the snow is finally almost all melted, and the temperature hit a balmy 58 degrees.  Not exactly swimming weather, and most of the lakes around here still have 4 or 5 inches of ice, but the sun came out for a bit and I left the cabin and took a drive down to Morgan County to see a couple of my brothers in law and to make a jaunt over to the Cikana State Fishery in Martinsville IN (EM69tk).  It was glorious just being outdoors in the sun. In just 33 days it will be spring. 

So today I setup the Elecraft KX-2 and the Alex Loop.  I have REALLY enjoyed this little portable magnetic loop antenna. It does such a great job on  15 meters and 20 meters, which is what I used it for today.  I was running about 8 watts today when I started on 15 meters (21047 Khz).  My first contact was Bill VE7KIN way up in British Columbia, then I worked Scott KJ7DCF in Idaho, and finally Eric VA2IDX in Quebec...after that I moved down to 20 meters (14043 Khz).  I spent about 50 minutes on the air and logged a total of 20 contacts with this little setup.  Check out the map. 

Contact Map for 02/16/26 from Cikana State Fishery - Martinsville IN

After I finished I was planning on hiking one of the trails there but the mud was about 4 inches deep, so maybe the next time.  Here is what my signal strength was showing on the Reverse Beacon Network. 

And last but not least is a decent picture I took of the Alex Loop portable magnetic loop antenna system. I have it mounted on the  bottom half of a old music stand that Ivin N9IVI gave me a few years ago. 

Until next time! 

73 de KB9BVN

Brian