There’s quite a bit of noise at my house with all the power lines and neighbors. I also found that my power over ethernet switch causes some terrible RFI right in the middle of 40m and 20m SSB bands. I was reading a lot about Summits on the Air, its sounds really fun but there aren’t any summits in Florida. I heard about [Parks on the Air](https://parksontheair.com/) from the [Ham Radio 360 Podcast](http://hamradio360.com/index.php/2017/02/21/ham-radio-360-w-w-f-f-aka-parks-on-the-air/) and was very interested. I purchased a Yaesu FT-891 radio for portable work and built a 20m dipole using an SO-239 connector, a plastic gelato ice cream top and speaker wire to use for activating parks. I considered the FT-857D but it has some issues with the display in the sun and I feel like I didn’t need the struggle of QRP at this period of the solar cycle(I’ll definitely get a QRP rig someday). My first activation was K-1916 Skyway Fishing Pier State Park. It’s an old bridge about 20ft above Tampa Bay and I put up 10ft poles for the dipole. Almost no noise out here on the bridge but there was a contest so I had a lot of trouble finding a spot to CQ. All and all it went pretty good for my first activation. I’ll probably come back to this spot again because it was real easy to setup and a great place for signals.
