On the way back I stopped at K-4633 Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest. I only attempted to pronounce it once, the other ham said they can’t pronounce words like that up north. This one is well north of I-75 and about 10 miles down Keri Rd, which is an unpopulated road so it was a really nice drive. There were multiple entrances to the park, I picked one that looked nice on google earth. I paid another $2 entry fee and drove down the road for awhile. Really nice views. I was on a conference call for work with a guy from England, one from New Zealand and a group in…

State Forests are my favorite type of activation. Hardly anyone around and they’re massive (the two things are probably related). This one is accessed via a bridge east of Naples, FL that goes over I-75 (it’s not publicly accessible from I-75). Another half mile or so from the entrance is the fee station and info booth. ($2 fee per person) Then its on a road that looks to go on forever. Six miles down this road, I made a left. An overhead view of this state forest shows a grid of roads like it was planned as a residential area. My plan was to active K-3618 Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State…

It’s starting to cool down a little in Florida so I went out for a Parks on the Air activation. At 82F it was still sweaty but bearable. A little down the road from park K-3607 that I activated previously, is South Fork State Park, K-3656. This is land that I think they are reserving for a future park, or protecting it from becoming farmland by calling it a park. It’s part of the Southwest Florida Wildlife Management District, which I needed to walk through to get to the state park land. It’s an oddly shaped park due to the WMA and farms around it. This map doesn’t show the…

I’m not loving the KX2 and Wolf River Coil combination. I’m able to make contacts but it’s hard. I bought it specifically for travel. I think I need to look more seriously into the loop antennas. The coil puzzles the TSA x-ray guys so about half the time I get my bag pulled for additional questioning. I tell them it’s a ham radio antenna and then they look at it funny and send me on my way. After 3 failed activation attempts I was able to get a successful activation, getting 11 contacts in 2 hours at Golden Gate Canyon State Park in Colorado. The views are amazing here. I…

I arrived early on a business trip to Houston so I decided to try out the KX2 at a park in Galveston since I’ve never been out that way. I had trouble with transmitting. I brought my Antenna analyzer and was getting a decent SWR on that but the radio was showing an infinite SWR. It was extremely humid so I gave up after about half an hour. I think my coax might not be good. I’ll try it another time (maybe in the winter), I come to Houston often.

I travel to Miami every once and awhile for work and I’ve stopped 3 times now to try to activate the Big Cypress National Preserve. There’s a “rest area” with no facilities off I-75 that has an entrance to the preserve. I tried to activate from this part twice before. The first time I setup in the field near the road. I was stopped by a trooper to see what I was doing (the mast looks sort of like a mortar launcher before you extend it). I explained it was ham radio and he said cool, but not to run the wire over the road. I had terrible noise and…