With it being Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. I decided to take Friday off. The weather in NE Ohio is only like this for a small slice of the year and given that it wasn’t raining or grey, it was going to be a great day to be outside. After knocking out some chores around the house, I decided to head out to, well, yeah, Cuyahoga Valley National Park – K-0020. This was a rare day when I didn’t feel like riding my bike to the park. There were one too many aches, so I gave in and took the Jeep.
The park had plenty of people, but I didn’t see many of them. I grabbed a table that I frequent when I’m at The Ledges area and set up very quickly. The bands were a mixed bag. I found myself moving around. 2 contacts on 40m then 2 more on 17m. I settled in on 20m because there is always a hunter waiting to jump on an FT8 activator. This was no exception.
When I got through my last FT8 pile-up for the day, I was at 13 contacts. Not too bad! So I did the thing. I plugged in my paddles and moved over to CW.
I settle on 40m for CW mostly because my antenna seems to do well on that band and there always seems to be some patient operator out there willing to sit with me as I muddle through the QSO. This time out, I only grabbed two contacts. Something strange happened shortly after my second QSO. Another operator started a QSO on the frequency. I have to assume that they couldn’t hear me (I was only pushing out 5 watts after all) and keyed up on what they thought was an opening. That said, I know I was spotted on the RBN. I always assume ignorance over malice in situations like this. But it was weird.
I didn’t have enough time to jump to another band, so I packed it in with 13 FT8 and 2 CW contacts. The QSO Map looks like this:
In my next activation, I’m going to flip it around. I will start on CW and move to FT8. Maybe that will get me in a better position to get the bulk of – or all 10 of – my contacts for the activation of the park. I’m two activations shy of another Repeat Offender Activator award for this park and 35 contacts short of a kilo. I can’t read. I have 765 contacts, not 965. I’ll be hitting CVNP for a bit yet. That’s still pretty close to knocking out some of the only paper chasing goals that I have for this year.
