Thomas Does Radio or Something

Last weekend on Saturday, September 17th 2022 was the fifth annual Wisconsin Parks on the Air . Since I kicked off 2022 getting into QRP HF and identified portable park hunting as a nice niche of amateur radio to specialize in considering the lack of apartment operating, this contest is an obvious fit. For the primary effort, where else to go except my usual stomping ground: Governor Nelson State Park (contest abbreviation GNSP, K-1452 , wiki ). Arrival at Governor Nelson after the errands of the morning.

Catching up on the blog by going straight from activation to post! Despite the solar storms today, the Kp dropped a bit to 4-5 for my targeted 21-24Z on 2022-09-04. Allegedly the band conditions would be bad, but I found them quite usable. If anything, I had more success than some other trips. Most notably, I had a QRP hunter call back and give a 59 with a 59 deserved in response; 5W each way! Don't necessarily believe the predictions; your presence with a rig contributes to the bands being less dead! Anyway, the point of this trip to Governor Nelson State Park ( K-1452 , wiki ) was to make use of my 20m QRP dipole that I constructed earlier in the summer. Supporting it today was my 26' jackite telescoping fiberglass pole, also a more recent addition to my activating equipment. Operating point under cloudy skies, setup at a park picnic table with the dipole mostly N-S aligned. Inverted-V goes off to the table to the north and to a tree to the south.