One really annoying bird kept me up late and woke me early so I made a nice breakfast and went to my first spot about 40 miles through the forest. This place is called Tate’s Hell State Forest K-4640. Apparently Tate got lost out there long ago. He said it was like Hell when he got back and the name stuck.
I went in a mile or so, made a right and looked for a post or stump to tie the antenna pole to. I didn’t find one so I went with the wire tripod method in the road. It was sunny and I was a developing a farm tan so I took my shirt off. Not much longer after that I’ve got a small pileup going and working a station from Germany when a female park ranger comes by leading a couple forestry trucks looking like WTF is this. She’s nice and asks if I need help, I tell her I’m doing ham radio and she’s says “Have fun”. I finished up with the German and made a couple other DX contacts from this spot.
I had a few more planned for this day, but mostly parking lot activations and I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with the laptop and USB CAT control issues running FT8 with the hamstick, so I continued on. This is where I started to see the destruction from hurricane Michael.
I headed through Panama City and had a nice lunch at a local place, Bayou Joe’s. I went to St Andrews State Park but it was really crowded and hot so I just hung out on the beach for a few and left without putting up the antenna. I’ll come back around someday and activate this one. I picked up some dinner and headed to the campsite for the night. This one has a shower.
I made a bunch of contacts on 40m from here. I also did the first conference call fro the Field Day commitee that I was invited to join for this year’s 3 club joint Field Day event in June.
This is a nice park, only 26 sites but with a nice boardwalk that leads to a sinkhole waterfall. Unfortunately the overlook was damaged and blocked off for safety, it’s 100ft down.
I woke up early to the birds again. I got some great shots of the sunrise from here.
After this I headed to my folks place to do some fishing and see some visiting family. Ended up with 201 contacts and 12 parks activated. My next POTA event will be the May 3rd SPARC meeting where I will be doing a POTA presentation for the club members.