Endless Variation
It’s pretty clear that POTA is my thing when it comes to this hobby and that my real goal is to get outside and play radio whenever I’m able. Usually, this is a solo run to the park or maybe with my wife if we’re out cycling. Aside from a couple of ourtings with the club I’m in, I’ve not done any POTA with other operators. All of that finally changed!
The ham radio community one finds on Mastodon is full of friendly, open, and fun operators. Every day I go online and have some back and forth with other radio folks who are out there having a good time with their radios and all of the adjacent side hobbies that come with the hobby. One such operator is Todd KE2AEQ. He had reason to be in town and gave me a shout asking if I’d want to go do a joint activation with him at my favorite: Cuyahoga Valley National Park US-0020. I jumped at the chance.
Multi-Op Setups
We talked over email a bit about how we would do the activation. We’re both QRP nerds and enjoy CW. We thought about setting up and seeing if we could pass the key as easily as people pass the mic. I’ve NEVER done that before, so I was game to give it a go.
However…
The weekend we were scheduled to be at the park was at the tail of the North American QSO Party – CW. That meant that every CW op out there was going to be bouncing around looking for contacts and that POTA guys like us might starve. Sure, we could go park it on the WARC bands and hope for the best, but that sounded like a bit more of a slog. So we decided that we’d go SSB and try this hot new Phone mode everyone keeps talking about.
Gear
I brought along my IC-705 and the Hardrock-50. KE2AEQ said that he’d wanted to see that amp in action when I suggested it so tossing it in the Jeep was no big deal. I got it set up and plugged in the mic (which I remembered to bring along!). With everything sitting neatly on my camp table and the Chameleon whip with extention set up next to us, we got ready to unleash 45 watts of fury!
The Activation
Passing the mic went smoothly. Once we got on the air, we were doing really well with hitting contacts. Admittedly, we got a little spoiled as we would have runs of 4 or 5 contacts and then a chunk of silence.
We had a self-professed snowbird ham, his partner, and their dog stop by to say hello. As I thought I would, I forgot his call, but it was nice to chat about the setup and encourage a Technician to go get his Genral already so we could have more HF folk to talk with when we activate! It was a fun conversation and when he took off, we got back to it.
We ended the day with about 20 QSOs in the bag. Plenty of park to park action, too! Lots of good conversation and nerd talk. We even did that thing I see all the time where two ops get on their HTs and grab 2M and 70cm Park to Park contacts for giggles. I can check that one off of my ham radio bucket list!
The QSO Map
Final
I’m really glad that KE2AEQ reached out and suggested that we activate together. It was a blast! I would definitely do that again. And if/when I get out east again, you can bet I’ll give him a shout so we can do an activation on his turf. I highly recommend getting together with your ham radio community and getting outside. It’s a blast!
