We had 15 people show up for the SPARC in the Park event. I brought my Wolf River Coil and setup the KX2 and FT-891. I mostly played with the KX2 CW paddle as I hadn’t tested it out yet. It will take some getting used to. I made a POTA contact and one contact with Billy KN4LUZ in the parking lot. Tom NY4I made a few satellite contacts using the Icom 9700. I spent about 5 hours here, it was a fun time.
I planned on doing one activation, seeing how I felt and then maybe doing another. My first planned activation was K-6310, the Holey Land Wildlife Management Area. A bunch of new Wildlife Management Areas were recently added to the POTA list of parks in Florida. This was the first activation of K-6310. Holey Land is located about 6 miles down a nice paved road off US-27 which is an alternate route I sometimes take back from Miami instead of Alligator Alley. Shortly before the entrance to this area there’s a nice boat launch that I thought was the spot. Looking at the map I needed to go a little further…
This is a big park right next to K-4634 that I activated previously. This park is 120 square miles and has basically one road going through it, James Scenic Drive. This is the road I thought I could get to from K-4634. Quite a few cars drove (maybe 6) while I was activating. I’m not sure what the other people are up to. One guy stopped and shut off his truck to ask what I was doing, I think he was expecting something else because he left almost immediately after I explained it. I started on CW and made 10 contacts then switched to SSB. Sideband was almost instant pileup,…
I’ve completed my 3rd CW Academy course and signed up for their final “Advanced” class that will start in a month. These classes use the online video conference program Zoom. We had 5 students, 1 instructor and 2 associate instructors. Everybody made it through this one which is good, it’s a hard skill to learn and at least one person dropped out of my previous classes. One of the differences in this class and the previous ones was the emphasis on getting on the air. Each week we set Get On The Air goals. This definitely improved my ability and has gotten me to start doing my Parks on the…
I made a decent amount of contacts in the 5 hours I operated this contest. 2 contacts with Hawaii. I had a conference earlier in the day so I made a late start. 40m had a lot of QSB so I’m hopeful I was able to complete some of the contacts as I lost contact before getting the Thank You (TU) message from some of them. I’d really like a bigger antenna. I googled around for them after the contest, the one I like is 80ft long and would need a large tower to hold it. Someday.
