Operating North America SSB Sprint November 2023

I went out for the North America SSB Sprint for November 2023 to get a combo park activation and contest participation in. My choice was the north shelter at Governor Nelson State Park (US-1452, KFF-1452, wiki) as an exploration for hoping to operate at this location for the upcoming ARRL 10m contest. Of course, I wasn't operating on 10m given the lateness and band selection for the sprint! And the early sunset meant that I didn't really get the best pictures for the antenna setup since I had to get the antennas up while I could still aim.

My antennas of choice for the evening were the 28' speaker wire direct-fed and 70' speaker wire through a 9:1 deployed as slopers south to north with a shared mess of "radial field" in the shelter with me.

Antenna feedpoints in the shelter just after getting them up



I had a mess of radials, using 1x 28', 4x 17', 4x ~4m, and 1x 25' coax on the ground connected with a couple banana cables between the two feed points. This was also an opportunity to use a new connection method for holding the unun-on-board down between the radiator and support. The extra holes and rope worked quite well!

Post-setup twilight looking out from the shelter and across the lake toward the capitol

With the time change and progression of the season, I still had plenty of time before 0Z to operate self-spotted for the park programs before the sprint despite it being pretty dark out.

Laptop and KX3/PX3 operating position for starting with 17m for POTA/WWFF

Getting to 10 QSOs for the POTA credit was straightforward on 17-20-40-80m ahead of the contest.


Late posting: the actual contest was pretty reasonable, but since I haven't gathered the results in the draft of this post, I'll just post the setup photos.

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