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 took a day off from work and decided to get out for an activation. This park takes only 2 turns from my house but is around 45 mins away. I scoped it out via google maps and went to the North entrance as I prefer to activate in out of the way locations. I used my foldup cart to haul the gear via the Black Rail trail into the park. Like most of my activations lately I started on CW and then switched SSB. I had a decent pileup going on CW. I can handle about 20 minutes of that before I start getting CW fatigue and my sending…

Finally got out of town, probably should have just been doing parks this whole time, there was the normal (large) amount of traffic on the Skyway bridge heading over to Parrish, FL where this park is. This is one of the newly added Wildlife Management Areas in Florida and it hadn’t been activated yet. When I arrived there was a woman on a horse. She said she’s been around there for 6 years and I’m only the 4th person she’s ever seen there. The was also a children’s playground that looked like it had never been used. There’s a covered pavilion right at the entrance, no table but I brought…

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’d been saving this one for a nice day off. Alafia River State Park has a great system of mountain bike trails, probably the best in Florida. I’ve been here once before to go riding. I tried to take some videos with my phone on my handle bar phone holder but it came out too shaky. You can see some videos of the trails here, https://alafiatrails.com/ After doing some riding, I had lunch and then setup the radio. I used the Wolf River Coil on 40m first. I could hear people really well but they weren’t hearing me. I got 5 contacts pretty quick, but then nothing so I setup…