Thomas Does Radio or Something

With a vacation day on Friday, 4 March 2022, (ahead of the Destiny 2 raid launch) I decided to try some late shift antenna experimentation and try to get an activation in at K-1452 , Governor Nelson State Park ( wiki ). Playing with wire and transformers on inappropriate mix toroids in the dark didn't pan out (as expected of the effort) so the late shift didn't pan out with only 4 contacts on 20m. So I resolved to go back in daylight with more antenna capabilities.

Here's a quick, low-effort post for the day. I got this XGGCOMM digital mode adapter for Yaesu with my FT-818nd when I purchased the package from another ham. It's rather inconvenient because it does audio out/in as analog while CAT is a USB to serial chip. If I had a home station and a desktop setup for my digital modes, it'd be fine. For field use, I sure don't want to haul this, and a USB sound card, around.

It's already the start of the UTC day for the Wisconsin QSO Party (March 13, 2022 - 1800Z to 0100Z March 14) and my plans are kinda in place. With proven antenna capabilities on 40m and 20m (blog post of that POTA activation still in the backlog) that should probably also give me 15m with more tuner help, plus 6/2/70 FM capability, that should give me enough to work with. Since there's a perfectly reasonable time constraint on the contest, planning to operate portable for the whole thing is probably within my capabilities. So, what's the plan? Destination: K-1441 Blue Mound State Park ( wiki ) containing summit W9/WI-010 . Summit summary from sotl.as, map content from Open Street Map contributors

It was a nice day in Wisconsin and, having taken Friday the 25th off for video gaming, it was a nice change of pace to throw in some POTA in a new location on Sunday the 28th. The actual intention was getting to K-1459 Lake Kegonsa State Park ( wiki ), which I definitely managed to do. I'll get to the RaDAR in a bit. On the way out of town, I stopped by Bagels Forever, a local bagel factory with walk-in service counter serving a full selection of options. I chose my standard sausage-egg-and-cheese, gouda, on sesame with two additional cold plain bagels since they were out of chocolate chip and bagel sticks. These are key to getting set up! Getting setup on a picnic table at the snowy Williams Knoll as the bench dries out