Since we were unable to do the multi-club event at the fire station this year, I planned a camping trip to a POTA park with my g/f for Field Day. I wanted to do some primitive camping but at a place where you can park at the site. This type of camping is pretty rare in Florida. I found that Ocala National Forest allows for dispersed camping. Upon arriving, I found the area I had planned via Google Maps satellite view wasn’t very suitable for camping. We drove around for an hour and eventually found a suitable spot.
At this year’s Hamcation I bought another spider beam 40ft mast so I setup both the 40m vertical and the 20m dipole at the same time and used a coax switcher to switch between them.
Field day was a bit of a mess. So many stations, one frequency had 4 people calling CQ on it. I ended up with only 60 contacts, 35 CW and 25 Phone. Most of the CW I got around dawn on 40m, the bands were still crowded but the pileups weren’t as deep. By 9am I was hardly able to get through to any stations due to the pileups.
Overall it was an ok camping trip. It was pretty hot out, I much prefer the A/C of the firestation, hopefully we’ll be able to get back in there next year.
A book series a like talked about a bombing range in central Florida, which happens to be in the Ocala National Forest. I drove up to the gates to check it out.
