I spent part of the Fourth of July weekend at Ft. Mountain State Park. I really like this park. It’s where my wife and I spent our honeymoon many years ago. This time I had a nice drive through campsite. The campsites are located down from the mountain top but I am usually able to get my signal out. Driving up there, the temps were in the upper 80’s but by the time I got to Ft Mountain, the temperature dropped by about 18 degrees. Seems a cold front passed over but then on Saturday afternoon, it made its way back in the form of a squall line. The wind picked up and we had thunderstorms overhead for about an hour or so. I had to lower the antenna and hunker down in the Radio Flyer.
Prior to the storm, the man came around and placed American Flags on the campsite markers. I love seeing our flag especially when the wind stands it up.
I placed a garbage bag over the lowered antenna to prevent water from filling up the fiberglass antenna pole. My antenna goes up and down in less than a minute.
The setup was typical. My homemade 28.5′ Random Wire Vertical with a 17′ counterpoise. The radio this time is my new (to me) IC-7300. I traded the FT-710 for it. Nothing really wrong with the Yaesu, I prefer Icoms. I now have two IC-7300 for EmComm and FunComm. One thing I can do with the Icom that I cannot do with the Yaesu is show all of the meters.
Where this really matters is during digital operation. I can watch Power, ALC, and SWR all at once. With a mode like FT8, the waterfall isn’t important on the radio.
Band conditions were poor with sporadic good moments. I book campsites months in advance so I have to work with what I got. The mode this time was FT8 and the power was in the 40-45 watt range. The IC-7300 doesn’t even get warm. I went QRV at about 1500 hrs local and operated until about 0100 hrs. I get early the next morning and checked into my EmComm net and then back to FT8. Like to check into the EmComm net from a park to give net members the opportunity to work a field station. I operated all day until about midnight local Saturday night. Sunday I packed up and came home.
Overall, I did pretty well. I worked 510 stations (500 for POTA) including 46 States and 11 DX entities. That puts me pretty close to a kilo maybe next time there. here is a QSO Map of the activation. The money bands were 40, 30, and 20 this time around.
Everything worked as advertised and only a few minor glitches. Below is a short YouTube of the activation. 73 — Scott
KK4Z 