I’d been planning some time off for a POTA adventure for awhile and this was the week. I spent some time planning a route up the west coast of Florida and into the panhandle. I considered going all the way out to Pensacola but I decided to save that for another time as it’s about a 8 hour drive (with a ton of parks on the way). Interestingly, Justin Sligh(KN4MQR) did a similar route for my first day on the Sunday before I left. I mentioned this to him on Facebook and he sent me a map that sent me to this gorgeous spot for my first activation.
I’m glad he sent me the map because I was planning to activate this from a roadside where the park extends into. This was 8am, I made 3 quick contacts on SSB and then decide to try my new cable on FT8. I quickly found out that FT8 is not as fast as I had hoped but it did work when no one was answering my voice CQ’s.
The parking area for the trail that lead to the refuge is part of the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge, K-0235 so I finished of with testing my hamstick antenna via FT8 and got the 10 contacts to activate that designation.
Next, I went to Yulee Sugar Mill State Park, which is more of a picnic area with some ruins. Here I found out that the Mac can be flakey with FT8 and the Yaesu FT-891 serial port. I got 3 contacts via FT8 as I struggled to get the radio to stop transmitting via the USB connection. I didn’t feel like getting the big antenna out due to the low contact count at the previous location(like a mile away) so I continued on. It was about now that I realized I wasn’t going to be able to keep my plan of 12 parks in one day. After seeing the crowd at the Homosassa Springs park I decided to skip ahead to another location that has 2 park designations.
The Cedar Key Scrub State Preserve K-3611 is a horse trail, it also overlaps with the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge at this location. No one was here so I got a nice spot on a picnic table.
I had a nice view of a 200ft cell phone tower with a guy climbing it while I was doing my activation.
I took a quick tour of Cedar Key after this and then tried to find a spot in the Waccasassa Bay Preserve State Park. It’s only accessible via boat but there’s a small portion near a road but it’s private property to get to it so I had to turn around. I stopped and picked up some ribeyes for dinner and headed to camp in the Goethe State Forest K-4622.
I collected some firewood and setup the antenna. I setup the 40m meter second after a request from Facebook and made a decent amount of contacts. This campground was nice but you could hear the noise from the highway so not as serene as it could have been (though when nature called during the night it was dead quiet).
This day made me realize that my goal of activating all the parks in Florida (counted 252) is going to be a lifelong goal more that something that will just be completed in a year or two. It was a good day.