QRP Fun with PCARS
Every year, the Portage County Amateur Radio Service – aka PCARS – hosts a QRP contest at Fred Fuller Park in Kent, Ohio. This tradition goes back many years and it’s always a good time. Modes come and go and the rules shift a little, but mostly it’s an attempt to push back against mother nature in February in NE Ohio because, let’s face it, it gets pretty harsh up here in the winter.
There is always a great pot luck situation in the main shelter building that involves a contest for the best hot dish and dessert. Lots of chili (which I can’t have in my house because my wife and I are still arguing over beans being allowed in chili after 20 years) and homemade mac and cheese. It looks and smells great – doubly so when the weather is rough.
There’s also a tradition of wearing Hawaiian shirts. You get points for that. And you get points for having a black squirrel on display at your operating position. Lots of little touches like that make it a ton of fun with 5 watts max for CW and Digital and 10 watts for SSB.
Since I moved back to Ohio, my Dad AC8NT and I have made a point of operating together. We usually run a lot of FT8. Now, given that this isn’t a POTA entity, we’re not very attractive as a station to work. We still do pretty well just calling CQ like any other QRP station would. We get our share of contacts that way.
Setup
This year, due to the wet and muddy road situation, they closed off the roads back to the pavillions. I didn’t feel like having the old man hike it, so we got there early and grabbed the nearest pavillion. I set up my Chameleon whip with extention and ran it to the IC-705. My Ubuntu powered Surface GO 2 was ready to go. This setup has never failed to perform for me and this was, happily, no exception.
When we started off, there was a good amount of snow on the ground. As the morning progressed, it turned to rain and started to get, well, gross. It didn’t deter us. We got a lot of contacts with Europe on 12-meters. We did pretty well on 40-meters when we were getting started. We skipped 20 altogether. With about 90 minutes in the field, we’d filled a log sheet and a half. Not too bad!
Heading In
The contacts were coming at a pretty decent rate, but the weather was getting to be downright disgusting. Rain at 30-ish dF isn’t anyone’s cup of tea. The wind picked up just enough to bring some of that water into the shelter and make me shake my head. The old man has had a few health issues and said he was getting cold. This is a hobby. When it stops being fun? We head inside for chili. And that’s exactly what we did.
QSO Map
For 5 watts on FT8 we did really well. The propagation gods were definitely smiling on us probably as a consolation prize for the weather. The QSO map looks like this:
Final
It’s never not fun to head outside and play radio. All told, we were out for a couple of hours and then eating chili with other club members for a bit. The weather wasn’t wonderful, but the company was good and it’s always more fun to play radio than not to play radio.
Thanks for reading and 72!
