Today when I left the house I had a list of parks in my head; some new, a few that I just haven’t visited lately. Necedah, Buckhorn, Rocky Arbor, Dell Creek, Mirror Lake, Natural Bridge, Devil’s Lake, … As I drove away from the KwikTrip with a fresh breakfast sandwich and a big cup of coffee, Willow Creek seemed to float to the top. Not just a new-to-me park, but a newly listed one, now that they are registering new parks in the US again; also not too far away from home.
Though the morning started off cool and cloudy with some quick rain showers, by the time I got there is was partly cloudy and warming up. There was no shade to be had, so I chose to operate from the car with my Buddipole vertical.
Setup was simple and quick. When I turned the X6100 on, there was a POTA station right there, so I worked him for a park-to-park twofer and started to tune around looking for an empty frequency … and found another park operation! This was a two-operator twofer! Continued looking, and continued finding other parks.
After a while I did find some empty space and I started CQing and self-spotted. I called CQ with no takers for a while, until stations started showing up there for a net. I started to QSY and (surprise!) found another park! Trying a run operation hadn’t worked all that well, so I continued hunting. Early in the second hour the external 12 volt battery ran out of charge (I never recharged it after activating Wildcat Mountain last week) and I made the remaining contacts at 5 watts on the internal battery. Two hours netted 15 contacts, every one a park-to-park!
Thanks for visiting driftlessqrp! More, soon!
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