This was a fun one. I went out to Terra Ceia Preserve State Park. It’s less than a 30 minute drive and not much of a park, more of a swamp with a dirt road you aren’t allowed to drive on. I had a failed attempt at an activation in Big Cypress due to being too close to the powerlines I think so I didn’t want to operate from the parking lot on this one. For this activation I packed everything into a backpack, it weighed in at over 20lbs. My girlfriend and I walked in just under a mile, that’s about as far as I’d want to go with…
Upgraded Antenna
I used some military camo poles I picked up at Hamacation to make a higher mast for my 80m OCF dipole. This added about 12ft to the top. I don’t notice a huge difference and the SWR got worse which was unexpected. I’m still able to get through pileups into Europe and have been making contacts. I’ve got my eye on a hex beam with a rotor for the next antenna. I’ve been using the club station remotely and rotator with gain makes a huge difference.
“Ice Station” W0JH QSL
I received the QSL certificate from W0JH. They noted that they had their pre-meeting breakfast at the same restaurant I ate at in Stillwater when I was there two days before the QSO. Small world.
ARRL DX Phone Contest 2018
I participated in the ARRL DX Phone Contest this weekend. The band was full of DX contacts so it was a really fun time. I made 74 contacts in 40 countries over the weekend. Since I had things to do at night I only used 20m so I entered as single operator low power 20m only. If the scores are like they were last year I might get my callsign mentioned in the QST magazine score results for the Southeast region in that category. The usual winner P40L claimed 10584 contacts which is crazy. This was probably the most fun I had operating since I started.