Another day at Atterbury Fish and Wildlife Area

 

Another Day in the Great Outdoors at Atterbury

Another beautiful day today, low humidity, and temps in the upper 60's to mid 70's. Bright sun, and a slight breeze. So nice.  So I packed up the gear and headed to the park at about 12:30pm, drove around for a bit looking for a shady spot to erect the POTA station.  I stopped at several familiar places, Beaver Bottom Lake had no shade and about 15 people fishing off the dock.  I did not see any fish being caught but they were having a great time. I then drove over to Stone Arch Lake, and the parking area was also without any shade.  Since it was about 1PM the sun was almost directly overhead. I finally landed at Mink Meadow Marsh, under the shade of a big walnut tree that was hanging over one corner of the parking area. 

Once again at Mink Meadow Marsh

So today I decided I was going to make this a quick one and I would go ahead and use my Alex Loop antenna.  It's very easy to setup and tune, and goes a lot faster than the hitch mounted portable vertical. 

Alex Loop with my Elecraft KX-2 radio in its handy pouch

After I got the antenna assembled and in place, I broke out the KX-2 and remember to turn off the auto tuner.  When you are using a Magnetic Loop antenna, you tune it by adjusting the variable capacitor in the rectangular box at the bottom of the loop.  This is why you must set the autotnier in the radio to BYPASS.  I started out on 20 meters, 14.058 Mhz to be exact.  I got on the air at 1:13PM EDT and almost immediately started making contacts.  I worked Idaho, Newfoundland, Maine, Oregon, and Nevada in the first ten minutes.  Not bad for a Mag Loop and 10 watts. The band was really working well this afternoon.  At 1:40PM I shut the station down with 12 contacts, enough to qualify as an activation of this park, my 48th time to activate this park.

KX-2 radio and log book, ready to go to work! 

From the looks of my contact mapping, I had the antenna angled so it was radiating East-West. Worked both coasts and a bunch in the middle. 

Weatherman says we have more severe weather on the way, and to expect rain and storms the next three days, with over 3 inches of rain expected in total.  Indiana has logged 71 tornadoes so far this year.  We had one last Friday night the ripped through the Morgan Monroe State Forest, cutting a swath of knocked down trees 1/4 mile wide and about 8 miles long.  I will try to make to MMSF next month to do some POTA work....but I want to give the DNR a few weeks to get things cleaned up a little bit. 

Until next time, 73 es Best DX to you! 

Brian KB9BVN