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…

I’d been planning some time off for a POTA adventure for awhile and this was the week. I spent some time planning a route up the west coast of Florida and into the panhandle. I considered going all the way out to Pensacola but I decided to save that for another time as it’s about a 8 hour drive (with a ton of parks on the way). Interestingly, Justin Sligh(KN4MQR) did a similar route for my first day on the Sunday before I left. I mentioned this to him on Facebook and he sent me a map that sent me to this gorgeous spot for my first activation. I’m glad…

Activated Lake Manatee State Park today. I had driven past this one coming from Beker-Wingate State Park K-3607 and had it on my list. My girlfriend, Amanda, likes to find geocache’s while I’m doing the radio and it looked like there were a lot of them at Lake Manatee when I looked back then. Unfortunately it seems they have removed most of them. We found a couple outside the park on the way back. She’s working on her technician ticket so she can activate some parks too. The ARRL DX SSB contest was still going on so I built a 17m dipole before we left hoping that I could get…

Activated Caladesi Island State Park K-1844 today. It’s no longer an island after a hurricane closed the pass years ago. There’s two ways to get there, either on a ferry from Honeymoon Island or walking in from Clearwater. I picked up a cart at Dicks Sporting Goods a few weeks back so I figured we’d walk in. It doesn’t work great on the soft sand due to the small wheels but I pulled it through. The north part of Clearwater has no public parking so I dropped the gear and the gf at the northernmost public beach access and parked (way) back where there was parking. My phone says I…

This was a really fun one. I went right after the Brooksville Hamfest. The state forest is pretty big, I went to the Croom Lake section. I’ve been to Croom a few times before for the mountain bike trails, so I was familiar with the area. I went with the gf, we found a car trail back into the woods and found a nice spot to setup the antenna. I got great signal reports even all the trees. It was a perfect temperature out and very peaceful. Couldn’t ask for a better activation.

Had a guest from out of town so we took them to Honeymoon Island State Park for a nice day at the beach. Temperature was in the mid-60s and sunny, which made for a perfect day. I started on 20m and immediately got contacts without self spotting or posting to the POTA facebook group, which is a really good sign. I met one of the volunteers at the park who is also a ham. Invited him to the club’s winter field day in a few weeks. I switched to 40m after an hour and got 3 park-to-park contacts but not much else. Overall came out with 77 contacts.