That Didn’t Take Long
I have been using West Branch – US-1999 as my go-to park this winter. This is in part because there is a seldom-used shelter available and the park is quite empty this time of year. I’ve gone on at length about how much I enjoy the solitude at the park. It’s one of the things that I really enjoy about POTA. West Branch is a busy place once it gets warm enough to be on the water, so I’ve been enjoying the quiet as we inched our way through winter.
In fact, I’ve only activated West Branch a total of 41 times. I just pulled up the neat POTA stats and saw that my contacts break down very neatly to:
CW: 900
Data: 90
Phone: 10
How wild is that? What this really means is that I didn’t spend much time at this park before I started on my quest to learn CW. 900 contacts. That’s a lot more than I would have expected! Sure, I’m still chugging along at 15 wpm and I’m not exactly ready to rag-chew for any period of time, but I’m putting in the time and enjoying it. That’s what Ham Radio is about.
What’s intriguing is that I was pulling in more contacts per activation than at US-0020 when I was running primarily FT8. It should be obvious, but CW contacts for POTA can run much more quickly than an FT8 QSO. Not to mention that it seems to me there are more hunters on CW than FT8. There is bias in there, but it’s what I’m seeing.
Fox Den Activator
When we got back from our trip to Hocking Hills, I took the opportunity to head out to the park while the family was otherwise engaged in Things And Stuff. Two of the three trips I made out during the week were absolutely miserable. High winds. Temperatures in the 30s. Whitecaps on the water. Not the best time to be sitting outside and not moving around. But I did it. What I didn’t do was take many pictures.
During these last three activations, I pulled in the Fox Den Activator award for 40 activations at the park. Another neat PDF to add to my growing collection.
The notable contact for that trip out was a hit from France! F6EAZ was very patient and sent that call about 8 times to beat the noise. I got a 529 from that end. It’s always exciting to get Europe from a picnic table in NE Ohio on 5 watts.
The Kilo Activation
On Easter Sunday, I took the opportunity to head out while my wife and daughter had a hike for a challenge my wife is working on and my son, well, slept. Or something. My original thought was to sit in the Jeep, much as I hate it, and do the activation from there given the weather the past few days. But when I arrived, there was no wind. It was almost comfortable outside in the mid-40s. I changed plans and tossed my EFHW onto The Branch and got setup and ready to go.
This was the kind of activation that I see in videos. I was in pile-up mode for the first 30 minutes or so where I grabbed an average of a QSO per minute. It was a wild ride for sure! Operators doubling up and me trying to pick out bits so I could narrow the field. I’m getting better at that mostly, I think, because I don’t mind taking my time and sending “?” a lot.
There was precious little downtime during this activation. There were the odd minutes where no one answered, but for the most part, I think a lot of hams were hanging out and waiting for holiday festivities to start or just wanted to pass some time Sunday morning on the air. Either way, it worked out for me.
I do have to say that there are occasionally calls that come out of the blue that throw me. That definitely happened on this activation. Calls that start with “SM” are pretty rare for me with 5 watts in NE Ohio. But there it was. SM3NRY coming in loud and clear from Sweden. I did take a minute to check the call on my phone. Wow. How awesome is that?
I also managed to get KE2AEQ from the Mastodon Radio world in the log as well. A great day for radio!
What was particularly intersting was that I needed 64 QSOs to hit the Kilo mark. I caught 67. There was a dupe and two busted calls in there. Remember gang, always grab a couple of extra while you’re there. I think I would have been pretty bummed out to come up one QSO shy.
QSO Maps
Here are the QSO Maps for the three activations that put me over the top for the Kilo.
Final
I am sure that I will still get out to West Branch for activations, but we’re getting to the time of year when I spend way more time on my bicycle and try to travel to and from activations that way. There are also more boats and geese and people wandering around now. Plenty of photographers to go along with the disc golfers and folks fishing. The park and its people are waking up for spring. Like the birds, I will migrate elsewhere for a bit. There are new parks to activate and old ones to revisit. Maybe even a rove!
Thanks for reading and 72!
