It’s been almost two months since I last activated a park, so I was happy to get on the road to Pinnacle Rock State Fishery Area. As I pulled into the empty parking area I startled about 100 little yellow butterflies who were soaking up sunlight on the gravel. Wow! No one was fishing on Sunday, though a man and his big black Labrador dropped by later so the dog could take a swim in the pond. I started setting up almost exactly at noon; the usual gear: X6100, 17′ telescopic whip vertical on a Buddipole and tripod. 20 meter noise floor was about S2, with some thunderstorm static crashes on and off. I soon observed that signal fading was both quick and deep, and that problem persisted throughout the activation; one moment perfectly clear, 10 seconds later almost inaudible.
I started out hunting other parks; not really a thought-out decision, just how it worked out. Turn on the radio, start tuning, there’s someone in a park! Start calling! Strategically it might have been better to find a vacant frequency and start CQing. A good New Jersey twofer started off, Colorado was next, followed by Florida, and then:
I was trying for an activator in New Hampshire, calling at every QRZ in the hope of being heard among all the big-gun stations, making notes in the log, when I heard the operator say “Whoa, there goes the antenna.”. Silence. Eh, I know how that goes, the vertical has blown over a few times, and I have broken at least two of those long whips. I moved on.
It was slow going, I have to say. QRP SSB is not very good for busting pileups. I got lucky a few times, and caught stations just coming on the air, before the pileup built up. I made one contact that was the operator’s very last before going off the air; the station was on an overlook above Wolf Creek Pass (way up on the Great Divide); back in the day I liked that C. W. McCall tune and I wanted that in my logbook!
I had parked with the back of the car toward the sun so the radio and I would be in the shade, but the Earth had been turning for a couple of hours and I was getting a lot of hot sun, but there were still only nine QSOs in the log. It took almost 40 minutes to get through to another station. It turned out to be the same operator as the first contact of the day! She had moved along the trail, so one park was a duplicate, but the other one put me over the line! Woohoo!
I shut down and packed up with remarkable speed and headed for home! The butterflies were difficult to photograph, but I later determined that they were Common Sulphurs.
A bare-bones post. I didn’t take any good pictures of the activation, the free online QSO map generator is not accepting my adif file, so no map image.
I have a new post to write, so I’m just going to push this one out the door, with these wise words from Adam, K6ARK: “it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun” .
Thank you for visiting driftlessqrp!
Leave a Reply