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| US-4183 Teal Marsh |
Headed out to Atterbury again on May 7th in hopes of better conditions, and more contacts. Did not work out that way though. Took me almost an hour and a half to make 10 contacts and get this park activation in the books. Furthest contact was Wyoming, and that was another POTA operator working from Miles Landing BLM Recreation area. Not too bad.
I checked with the Reverse Beacon site and found my signal was being heard but it was very weak due to poor propagation characteristics. This Solar Cycle 25 is beginning to wind down. Each Solar cycle is about 11 years in length and the current cycle actually started back in December 2019. It hit the peak about 3 or 4 months ago, and now we are starting the 5 year slide to minimum conditions.
A signal to noise ratio under 10db is usually pretty hard to copy. So I was getting out, just not getting out very loud.
Here is a map of my contacts for this outing. The antenna I was using was the 33 foot tall, hitch mounted vertical antenna. I had a couple 16 foot ground wires attached as well, we call these radials.
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| Map of 10 contacts from May 7th at US-4183 - Took about 90 minutes |
So while I was waiting to make contacts I found this Painted Turtle sunning itself in the bean field, this guy was about 15 inches from nose to tail.
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| Painted turtle - Catching a few rays in the bean field! |
It was slow going, but at least I had some nice scenery to enjoy, and a plethora of different birds enjoying the marsh.
Well that's about it from this outing...until next time, may the propagation be with you!
73 de KB9BVN
