I’ve got some sick days I need to use so I took one today and activated K-1909 Oscar Sherer State Park outside Sarasota. About a 50 minute drive to get to this one. Super nice day. This park seems like it’s mostly a rest area for the old rail line bike path. I setup inside a pavilion. It wasn’t non-stop contacts but pretty close. I got a few in California and one from Portugal. Plus a part to park contact.
A year ago today my original callsign(KX4HL) appeared in the FCC database after 9 long days of waiting. It’s been quite a year, as of this morning I have 2411 QSOs. Here’s some of my QSO cards: I’ve moved from just a wire antenna to a hex beam on the roof, put up a 2m antenna, built a AMSAT antenna. I’ve done 11 Parks on the Air activations (and doing another today at K-1909 Oscar Sherrer State Park, look for me around 14.287). I participated in winter and summer field day with the St Pete Amateur Radio Club (SPARC), there’s a meeting tonight also. Been to 9 ham fests,…
Received my Parks on the Air Bronze Activator certificate for activating 10 different parks today.
I didn’t realize I had Veteran’s Day off until Friday so I planned some POTA activations. I started out at K-3607 Beker Wingate Creek State Park. This is just some scrub land for hiking, not really a park. I did pretty good and made 42 contacts here. Hit behind some sort of hunting perch or something for a little shade. Nice day for it. This park is just under an hour away from my QTH. On the way back I went to K-3635 Madira Brickel Mound State Archaeological Site. The indians around here would create mounds of shells for ceremonial purposes. This…
Now that it’s cooling off a little I’m getting out there to do some POTA activations. This weekend I did Little Manatee River State Park, about a 40 minute drive. This park seems gear toward horses but there weren’t any there this weekend so I had the horse area to myself for radio work. This was my best activation yet with 91 contacts, one from Brazil and one from Alaska.
I brought my HT on vacation with me to Ireland. It was a very full vacation so I didn’t bring my HF gear. It would be a great place to activate though, maybe another time. My brother and I climbed up the mountain in Connemara National Park near Clifden. At the top I made some calls and was able to contact a guy in Cork via a linked repeater. I used callsign EI/AA0O/P. Great views.
It’s too hot for activating parks in Florida so I went on the road. I was heading to a music festival and made some stops on the way to activate a few parks. Unfortunately there was flooding in the town next to the music festival which contaminated the water and they were forced to cancel the festival. Huge bummer, but at least I got in some camping and ham radio. First I activated Uwharrie National Forest in North Carolina. I stayed at the West Morris Mountain campground. There were only two other people there and one of them was heading to the same music festival. He ended up meeting up…
Activated 2 parks in north Florida while camping this week. K-4472 Osceola National Forest from the Ocean Pond campground and K-1902 Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park. Not too many contacts but the state park was mostly DX. Both spots had good views.
I joined up with N1COR and WU2F to activate Egmont Key State Park K-1863 for the Florida State Parks on the Air event. I’ve been to this park a couple times and thought it would be a great place to activate. It’s only accessible by boat, we took the ferry from Fort Desoto Park, see my Not POTA post about that park. We had 2 spiderbeam poles. I setup with 40m wire vertical and they setup with an end fed for 20m. We each got about 30 contacts. It was a fun day and a really great spot to setup. SPARC also contacted me about this activation and posted and article at http://sparc-club.org/pat-kx4hl-and-friends-activate-egmont-key-state-park/
This was a fun one. I went out to Terra Ceia Preserve State Park. It’s less than a 30 minute drive and not much of a park, more of a swamp with a dirt road you aren’t allowed to drive on. I had a failed attempt at an activation in Big Cypress due to being too close to the powerlines I think so I didn’t want to operate from the parking lot on this one. For this activation I packed everything into a backpack, it weighed in at over 20lbs. My girlfriend and I walked in just under a mile, that’s about as far as I’d want to go with…
