It was a weeked of time spent outdoors. The sun was there, the breeze was good, and the weather held all through Saturday and most of Sunday. It is a glorious time to live in the part of the world. The temperatures are almost perfect. The humidity isn’t horrible (that comes later in the summer) and there are parks and bike paths and rivers out there for enjoyment. So it was that my family spent Saturday kayaking with the Scouts and Sunday was left wide open for POTA!
For the first time in a while, my wife elected to join me. Having heard that I feel a little pressured when she’s along because, despite her best efforts, she looks bored after about 30 minutes, she brought a book that she is enjoying and that certainly took the pressure off of me.
We pedaled out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park – K-0020. I already said the day was beautiful. It was certainly ideal for cycling. We started off at The Ledges at the quiet picnic table I like. But within 10 minutes, the flies ran us off. That’s a first for me. I’ve never had flies so bad that I had to leave. Not even biting black flies. Just…flies. I did a quick tear-down and we went down the road to The Octagon which is in an open field with more breeze. There wasn’t nearly the fly population there for sure. I got on the air and got to work.
20m on FT8 seemed to be sketchy. I got a few contacts and then moved to 15m where things really picked up. It still took a while to get my 10 contacts for the activation. With my wife’s blessing, I plugged in the key and kept going. I did get another 3 contacts via CW. Two in MD and one in KY. I called CQ for a bit after that and didn’t get anywhere. The clouds were also starting to roll in and while we’d been hoping for some rain for the last couple of weeks, I didn’t really want it to start while riding home. So I packed it in.
This was my 40th activation of Cuyahoga Valley National Park – K-0020. As such, I got the Fox Den Activator award! This is another PDF for my collection of PDFs that sit in a directory somewhere. Maybe I’ll print them someday. Maybe not. POTA isn’t about the paper for me. It’s great to have these milestones that we can recognize and feel good about, but it wasn’t like I was dying to get to 40 activations.
But that kilo? It’s getting closer. And THAT I am excited about. 1000 contacts at a park is pretty cool. I’m only about 200 away! Maybe I can sneak in another activation this coming weekend. So yeah. Disregard the previous paragaph about how the awards don’t matter. I bet every operator has one that is subconsciously driving their activities.
Here’s what the QSO map looks like.
Yeah. That’s Alaska and Florida on the same QSO Map. It was a lucky day for this QRP operator. Thanks for reading and 73!
