Sunday afternoon it got up into the mid-40sF and was bright and sunny. It’s the kind of sunlight that warms a person who is sitting in it. One might even be able to ditch the coat for a little while, if the breeze doesn’t pick up too much. Looking outside to The Big Blue Room, it was just irresistable. We needed to get out, so my wife, the puppy, and I all piled in and headed out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park – K-0020.
With a lot of my activations lately, I’ve been tweaking this or that. Experimenting with a configuration or a piece of gear. Not this time. This was a vanilla setup using the IC-705, Chameleon whip with extension, and the Surface Go 2 running FT8. All I wanted to do was play radio in the park.
My wife and the dog went off on a little hike around one of the muddier and farther back trails to work on some new skills the pup has acquired. I set up at my favorite table and started to slide around the bands. 17m was good. 40m was empty. 15m and 10m were both in good shape. 30m did OK. I more or less just wandered from pillar to post seeing how things were out there in the sky.
There were some surprises. I got calls back from German and Ukraine. I hit as far south as the Gulf Coast off of Texas and as far west as the San Francisco area. Nothing in Ontario, which tells me a thing or two about propagation in that moment. It was just good fun.
I pulled in about 20 contacts in the hour-ish that I was out there. Not too bad. Activations like this are what POTA is all about. It’s getting outside and enjoying the day with the trusty portable radio.
Here’s what the QSO Map looked like.
