So I packed up all my portable gear and my new spiderbeam mast but before I left for the park I thought I would lookup the K number for the park. Turns out it was a country park and only state and national parks are part of Parks on the Air. Since it’s an awesome park and I had the day off I went anyway.
I got a great spot. First I setup a 40m vertical with 2 elevated radials. I made one contact about 20 miles away and couldn’t make any others. Then I switched to my trusty 20m dipole. Connected to the top of the spiderbeam I was worried it was going to break the pole so I put in 10ft down the pole or so and connected the other end to a tree. This worked much better. I was able to hear every station that popped up on the DX cluster and got through the pile up on almost all of them. I even contacted W0JH operating from an ice shack on a frozen lake in Stillwater, MN. Pretty much the opposite of where I was setup. Interestingly, I had dinner in Stillwater on my way back from Wisconsin 2 days ago. What a contrast. It was a fun radio day.
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