2021-06-19, 14:13:21
I successfully activated two Provincial Parks for the Parks On The Air (POTA) program last week. XYL Krystyna and I were camped at Arrowhead Provincial Park just outside Huntsville for three nights.
On the first full day at the park I erected my "shorty End-Fed-Half-Wave" antenna for 80m which does fine business on 20m and 40m too. I threw a line over a tree limb 41 feet up (I measured the height) and hoisted one end of the antenna up to the top. The antenna was erected as a sloper down to a 49:1 transformer three feet above ground at the other end.
Band conditions on 40m were pretty dreadful with lots of QRN but I managed a total of 22 QSOs (10 are required for a POTA activation), all CW at 100 watts. One QSO was particularly noteworthy. The other station was in the Shetland Isles north of Scotland. That was quite an achievement on 40m in the middle of the afternoon.
On the second day we drove into Algonquin Provincial Park and I set up my battery powered backpack station in the bike trail parking lot at Mew Lake. This time I used my trusty old Webster Bandspanner antenna. The Bandspanner is a manual screwdriver made in the 1960s but still works like a champ. Power was kept down to 30 watts to preserve the battery - a cautious step that maybe wasn't entirely necessary. My Bioenno 12Ah LiFePO4 battery will give me several hours of operation at 30 watts but I only needed about one hour for this activation.
Wednesday's Algonquin activation was even tougher than the previous day. I struggled to make any contacts at all at first. Then the stations started appearing - I must have been spotted on the POTA website. I had called QRL a couple of times before my CQs and was operating on a clear frequency but when the CWOps mini test came on the air a high-powered, high speed station tried to kick me off the frequency by deliberately jamming my QSOs. I completed my QSO and moved up the band to avoid the jerk.
Before I completed my 10 QSOs my SWR started rising inexplicably. My last two QSOs were completed with a 2:1 SWR and when I called CQ looking for further stations my SWR had risen to 3:1. I decided to quit for the day with the basic 10 contacts in the log and as I packed up my station I saw that my counterpoise wire had fallen out of the bush it was hanging in. The end of the counterpoise was actually touching the ground - hence the high SWR!
We drove out of Mew Lake and were lucky to catch a couple of moose feeding alongside Highway 60. Back at Arrowhead in the evening I retuned for 80m and checked into the GBARC 80m net. Unfortunately before I was called upon severe QRN wiped out my receive signal! Such is life in the world of ham radio. Great times, beautiful nature scenes and fun portable radio operations!
On the first full day at the park I erected my "shorty End-Fed-Half-Wave" antenna for 80m which does fine business on 20m and 40m too. I threw a line over a tree limb 41 feet up (I measured the height) and hoisted one end of the antenna up to the top. The antenna was erected as a sloper down to a 49:1 transformer three feet above ground at the other end.
Band conditions on 40m were pretty dreadful with lots of QRN but I managed a total of 22 QSOs (10 are required for a POTA activation), all CW at 100 watts. One QSO was particularly noteworthy. The other station was in the Shetland Isles north of Scotland. That was quite an achievement on 40m in the middle of the afternoon.
On the second day we drove into Algonquin Provincial Park and I set up my battery powered backpack station in the bike trail parking lot at Mew Lake. This time I used my trusty old Webster Bandspanner antenna. The Bandspanner is a manual screwdriver made in the 1960s but still works like a champ. Power was kept down to 30 watts to preserve the battery - a cautious step that maybe wasn't entirely necessary. My Bioenno 12Ah LiFePO4 battery will give me several hours of operation at 30 watts but I only needed about one hour for this activation.
Wednesday's Algonquin activation was even tougher than the previous day. I struggled to make any contacts at all at first. Then the stations started appearing - I must have been spotted on the POTA website. I had called QRL a couple of times before my CQs and was operating on a clear frequency but when the CWOps mini test came on the air a high-powered, high speed station tried to kick me off the frequency by deliberately jamming my QSOs. I completed my QSO and moved up the band to avoid the jerk.
Before I completed my 10 QSOs my SWR started rising inexplicably. My last two QSOs were completed with a 2:1 SWR and when I called CQ looking for further stations my SWR had risen to 3:1. I decided to quit for the day with the basic 10 contacts in the log and as I packed up my station I saw that my counterpoise wire had fallen out of the bush it was hanging in. The end of the counterpoise was actually touching the ground - hence the high SWR!
We drove out of Mew Lake and were lucky to catch a couple of moose feeding alongside Highway 60. Back at Arrowhead in the evening I retuned for 80m and checked into the GBARC 80m net. Unfortunately before I was called upon severe QRN wiped out my receive signal! Such is life in the world of ham radio. Great times, beautiful nature scenes and fun portable radio operations!
John VA3KOT
Blog: HamRadioOutsideTheBox.ca
Blog: HamRadioOutsideTheBox.ca
