Thomas Does Radio or Something

With the QSOs from my trip to California in October, I finally completed the requirements for a long-sought-after POTA award . James F. LaPorta N1CC Activator: Having QSOs from 10 different entities on 10 different band. I was trying to not have only one state (Wisconsin) parks on the list and ended up getting a 3-fer in California that satisfied the 10-band target. So not quite coast-to-coast, but more than just the local parks! Award: James F. LaPorta Award; In memory of N1CC issued to Thomas Murphy WN1C on 2024-11-04  

The afternoon after my sky picture , I went out to one of Wisconsin's newer POTA entities (Capital State Trail, K-9773) after work to pick up another activation. One of my hunted P2P contacts included a request for a station setup picture, so this is for VA5MUD who was operating from VE-0111. This was a quick activation cut right at 10 QSOs due to the arrival of the anticipated rain. Antenna setup using the trail emergency locator marker as a support for the fiberglass pole.

Last weekend was Winter Field Day 2023 and I caught the tail end of it to combine with some Parks on the Air at my favorite Governor Nelson State Park ( K-1452 , wiki ). Seven inches of fresh powder awaited between me and the shelter I activated from (and, of course, on the car before I left). Operating position looking across Lake Mendota to downtown Madison including the capitol

One of my objectives for the good weather in Maine during my holiday travel was to get out to the convenient and interesting parks in the area. As highlighted by W1DED 's map documenting POTA MAINE , there are a couple of Midcoast Maine parks that had no activations ever by 2022: both the Durham State Forest and Ducktrap River Wildlife Management Area. The reason? They're poorly documented locations with no convenient drive-up-and-know-you're-there place. The WMA even overlaps the local Ducktrap Preserve, but you'd have to figure out what that meant and where to hike. And the forest, well, the forest barely even seems to exist on the internet by that name! No official state information and just lots of OpenStreetMap references. I looked to take on the forest to understand where it was, what the access looked like, and then get out there and put the park on the air.

The weather turned out decently enough for the summer/plaque edition of Support Your Parks by POTA . And I've left this blog draft languishing since last September! Not that I've even gotten the Spring 2022 blog out... Anyway, I spent some time out and activated K-1452 and K-4250 to get on the list. Here are some pictures.

My holiday travel for the 2022-23 season was nice and complicated this year, but also gave me the opportunities for additional radio adventures! My feet-on-ground (outside of airports) sequence for this was: WI-IL-IN-OH-KY-ME-MA-NH-WI. Through that, I managed to escape major storm-related travel delays and generally have abnormally nice weather throughout. I ended up with hundreds of portable QSOs across 13 park entities and 3 summits, plus nearly a hundred QSOs at my parents' QTH. So, on to the summary!

After my technically-a-success in ARRL Sweepstakes 2022 , I decided a bit more ambition was necessary for the ARRL 10 Meter 2022 . Of course I could have just tried replicating my performance with an indoor antenna, but my log only had one QSO on 10m at Sweepstakes… and there would be interesting DX opportunities to be had with a better situated antenna. I had already confirmed that there was a convenient shelter at Lake Kegonsa State Park ( K-1459 , wiki is down) with mains power (those details in another potential post). Station setup at the shelter on day one. Just about to get started, log is empty! Of course, I wasn't just going to jump straight into this. There were pieces of prep and planning to get this done other than just scouting the location.

While I have more content to maybe actually write a full blog post about for my 7-park, 9-activation (thanks 0000Z roll-overs) roves across two days for the 2022 Fall Support Your Parks event from POTA, I have updated the POTA community wiki for parks I learned more about:

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.

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

Since writing and handling pictures is falling behind on my activations, here's the park wiki content I've actually created recently from visiting new parks: Cross Plains State Park ( K-1448 , KFF-1448 ) Governor Nelson State Park ( K-1452 , KFF-1452 ) New Glarus Woods State Park ( K-1467 , KFF-1467 ) Ice Age Trail ( K-4238 , KFF-4238 ) Blue Mound State Park ( K-1441 , KFF-1441 ) Log submission to each program may still be pending… Maybe not the ideal priority, but getting something done.

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.

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

It was a great day out, we had gone scouting the park the day before, and I was on vacation to use up my remaining balance before my time resets next month. Wasn't quite above freezing, but my experience with Winter Field Day said that I had enough of a setup to definitely get on the air. It was off to Governor Nelson State Park ( wiki ), K-1452 in Waunakee, WI (Dane county) at EN53gd. I was hoping that there would be park staff to exchange our kiosk receipt for a real window sticker, but it was too late in the day when I got there, it seems. Easy enough to put the ticket on the dash and head to the parking nearest the lake. Wire for 20m on fiberglass pole set up in the dying light at Governor Nelson picnic bench just before getting started. The orange wire spilling from my backpack was a thought at trying 10m, but with less than two hours before Late Shift started, it was my priority to get the 14th activated rather than playing around with new wire configurations.

Finally got around to ordering materials and using some wire! With the weather turning into full fall soon and wanting to finally use the gear I just got, it was off to a local park. It's an antenna! As assembled at dusk with the parking lot LED street lights just turned on.