I had good intentions today. When I went for my morning walk it was 8 degrees F and with the windchill, somewhere around zero. This was one of the coldest days I have ever experienced in Georgia. I have been colder, but not here. To celebrate a how low can you go day, I decided on a park activation. During my CW Innovations (CWI) Class I wished to try to make a day activation each week of the class.
Today, it was back to JL Lester Wildlife Management Area. It’s still the closest and I had pretty good luck there last time. I wanted to go over my random wire antenna since I wrote about it in my last blog. Everything was going along swimmingly until I tried to remove the trailer hitch from the receiver — it was frozen in place. Which meant I couldn’t use my K4SWL+ Antenna. Luckily, I had my Frankentenna in the back and broke it out. I ran it in stealth mode :Frankentenna Stealth Mode I hooked everything and away I went, or I didn’t.
I’m not sure what was happening, but I was not making any POTA contact. I don’t think I was making into the RBN either. I did get one hit on HamAlert from the Cayman Islands. I didn’t know if I wasn’t getting out or that there were not a lot of POTA hunters operating today. The bands did sound quiet. So thinking POTA today was a bust, I spun the dial and a guy calling CW on 20 meters. I gave a shout and he came right back to me. We had a nice QSO for about 10 minutes until QRM kicked in. We were both operating QRP from a park and we both had a KX2. Obviously, the radio worked and I was getting out. The thrill of victory is that I made an actual CW QSO and not just an exchange. First time in many years. It is this sort of activity that CWI encourages. So, I broke the ice and did it, usually it gets easier after the first one. One of my goals this year is to get more conversational with CW. I have taken the first step.
KK4Z 