Winter Field Day – QRP in the Driftless

On Sunday morning the weather had moderated a bit; the pre-dawn temperature was -12F, and I felt a bit more energetic than I did on Saturday. I still waited until about noon to set out, and I needed to deploy my battery charger / jump starter to get the car started. As usual, my first stop was KwikTrip, for a large coffee and a full vacuum bottle of Kona Dark Roast.

The drive to Wildcat Mountain State Park went by quickly, and soon I was driving up the narrow, winding entrance road to the park. The Amphitheater parking lot was about half full, probably cross-country skiers, so I went on to the Overlook parking area, which was empty; I backed into the far corner spaces to keep the sun out of my eyes and set up the Buddipole vertical.

The upper parking area, where I usually set up, was closed.

It was still amazingly cold; I was losing touch with my fingers even with the thickest insulated gloves.

Fired up the radio and started searching; quickly found a station with only a minimal pileup, then another … caught a POTA activator in Minnesota for a park-to-park contact; a few more, then I took a break.

Thank you for leaving the toilets open all year ’round, Wisconsin DNR! Very convenient for coffee-drinking ham radio operators and other outdoor folks.

Back on the air. It seemed like it was a bit easier to make contacts this year, maybe fewer people operating because of the Nationwide Bad Weather Alert? Maybe just because it was Sunday and approaching the end of the event?

Incidental observations: 20 meters was okay, a lot of fading in-and-out; as usual, most contacts were to the south and east. 2 stations with YL operators, way more than usual. About half of my contacts were Home stations; most of the others were Indoor (but not at home); only 3 were Outdoors, all in relatively wintry areas (MA, NH, MN). None with other stations in my class, Mobile.

Early on, I was trying to work a station who was being hit really badly with deliberate QRM, and I saw something on the waterfall that was new to me:

What in the actual bleep is doing that? It was LOUD, there were a lot of watts behind it, and it completely wiped everything out for 5 to 10 seconds at a time across about 30kHz. We’re gonna need a bigger wouff-hong!

The last QSO of the day was a real delight; I was tuning along down from 14200 when I heard a CQ and answered it. It was a ham in Ontario, Canada, and we chatted about the weather, our respective radios and antennas, all the usual topics, for a good 10 minutes, and agreed to exchange QSL cards. It’s really nice to enjoy “the spirit of radio” once in a while!

The sun was getting low in the sky, and I had 13 in the log, so I turned off the radio and took down the antenna. Poured out the last of the hot coffee for the drive home, and arrived there in due course. I actually didn’t transfer my pencil scribbles to Xlog until this morning. WFDA has started accepting logs in .adif format, so no more handcrafted Cabrillo file! Yay!

Map of my 13 QSOs – with the multipliers, 65 points.

This is how quiet things were at the park: as I was leaving, I spooked a deer who was just standing in the open, looking under the snow for something to eat.
(look straight up from the gloves on the dashboard)

I just liked this stark view of bare trees in the low slanting light.

What caught my eye while I was reviewing yesterday’s pictures was the faint green suggestion of the beginning of buds on the tree in the upper right.

Winter always comes to its end, and then, it’s spring!

Thank you for visiting driftlessqrp!