Too Much in One Day: POTA, SOTA, Wisconsin QSO Party (K-1441 and K9/WI-010, then K-4238)

With all the prep done over in the other post and acceptable weather, of course I had to actually take on the adventure. My drive out to K-1441 Blue Mound State Park (wiki) was a little on the late side. Stopping in Verona on the way over to acquire some fast food to maintain energy through the event also put me a bit further behind schedule. Soon enough, I arrived at the middle altitude parking lot of the park to hike the rest of the way to summit W9/WI-010 all in Iowa county. Only a bit into the 1800Z March 13th start, but there's still setup and making contacts to happen.

View up the trail from just above the parking lot to reach the East Tower on the summit

It was a prompt (if still effortful) hike to the summit. A quick attempt at VHF/UHF with a rubber duck antenna didn't net much, so it was off to HF.

Station with 29' speaker wire antenna setup on a no-longer-snowy park bench near the East Tower on the summit

Wow, it was slow operating. Band conditions weren't exceptional and my QRP wasn't cutting it for breaking in on 20 or 40. I didn't get my first QSO until 2006Z! Contacts remained slow attempting to hunt POTA stations P2P. Eventually I took a break and got back on VHF. 146.55 got me a contact; unfortunately, this would be my only Wisconsin station for the day.

From there, I managed to actually make a few more P2P contacts on 20 hunting existing spots. Still, this wasn't enough to activate the park, though my 4 for the summit were set. Critically, this also wasn't the performance I wanted for the contest! Without self-spotting, life's a lot harder in the park! Finally (possibly too late), I decided to stick out a frequency to run on for an eventual hunter spot for POTA. I proceeded to spend from 2230Z onward calling on 14.305 for almost the rest of my time on the contest. Eventually, that hunter spot came back for me and I ran for 16 contacts over the next hour.

With 0000Z approaching and a desire to possibly get a drive back to Verona for an attempt at K-4238 Ice Age Trail (wiki) during the contest period, it was time to break down. Back up the East Tower for the view and last (unsuccessful) VHF/UHF calls.

Sunset overlooking the slightly snowy summit from the East Tower looking west

Selfie from the East Tower looking back east into the blue sky toward Dane county

Moon between the bare branches of the tree holding my soon-to-break-down HF antenna

Last car in the lot at dusk! Dry pavement and just enough snow around the edges.

As it would happen, this was actually the end of my contest operation, unfortunately. The segment of the Ice Age Trail I was looking to activate was in Badger Prairie County Park and the through-road in the park was closed for the winter season. Alas! After the delay determining this unfortunate access problem, I surrendered to the arrival of 0100Z and headed over to the Verona Park and Ride lot for some non-contest operating.

No trees necessary! Calm evening with speaker wire up the fiberglass pole and speaker tripod combo again.

The usual passenger seat as tray-table operating position hiding from the cold.

It was a fairly difficult activation with QRP on only 40m at this hour and band conditions, but I pushed through and had the hunters to round out the required 10 (and also a spare). Another log complete for the "day" of operating.

Logging on this operation was a unique experience. I had not started on HAMRS in the field yet (I now use it paid on Android), so went with a Bluetooth keyboard and my smartphone into an IRC private message back to my home computer. Then it was just a matter of hand-transcribing into HAMRS for macOS and into the promoted WA7BNM Cabrillo Forms for WIQP. That was a bit of a mess getting through, but got the technology sorted, bug report filed, and accurate logs submitted to SOTA, POTA, and WIQP. If only I didn't have such a desire to log frequency rather than just band for every contact.

Now it's been long enough that all logs have been processed and the results are out! I'm at 9th place in the QRP division and 10th place with certificate for my first entry as SOR in Wisconsin. Most of my points were for operating in Iowa while my home county is Dane, so there's the plus for the trip pushing me forward a good bit!

Perhaps the same plan next year, weather depending. Look forward to next year's planning! (excuse the delay in this report)