My Contest
I’m not a contester. In fact, I only do two contests each year and they have something in common. I do the Freeze Your Acorns Off QRP Contest in February and the Ohio State Parks On The Air Contest in September. Both are sponsored by my local club, PCARS.
FYAO is fun because there’s great food and we sit outside at a local (non-POTA) park that is pretty darned close to my house. It’s usually cold and miserable. It’s a short contest and my dad and I like to radio together for that one. We are perpetually in third place.
OSPOTA is different. That’s one where I go to a very POTA-able park with my wife, a dog or two, the camper, and some really great food to hang out and spend about 6 hours on an 8 hour contest. It’s a lot of fun for me and my wife gets to do some fun hiking with the dog while I’m doing that radio thing.
Like prior years, we went to Salt Fork State Park – US-1989 – and put up the camper on a relatively boring slab close to the bathroom. I really need to make my reservations sooner next year so that I can get the spot we’d had previously. That’s a problem for next year.
The Gear
When I take the camper out and know that we will have shore power, I will often take along a switching power supply and my Hardrock-50 amplifier. Given that low power for OSPOTA is up to 100 watts, the 35 or so that I usually run with the HR50 is perfect. I don’t run batteries for this unless the noise is unbearable. The bands were rough, but that wasn’t really due to any localized interference that I could hear.
When I’m going to dump more than 10 watts into an antenna, I just take the Chameleon setup. This time it was the extension, the Cap Hat, and the whip. I rarely take the Hat out of the garage, but when I do, I notice benefits with the setup. Physics and all that jazz.
Given that this year the rules allowed for Phone and CW my IC-705 was really the only choice in my pile of rigs. I wanted to do a little FT8 to grab some additional POTA contacts before and after the contest, so why mess with a good thing? I tossed my wireless router in the bag along with my Ubuntu-Powered Surface Go 2. It’s a tried and true setup.
Operating
The contest runs for 8 hours. That’s the perfect amount of Butt-In-Seat for me though my wife points out that I always stop at about 6. Again, not a contester. I jumped on the air on 40M after some warm-up FT8 and found the bands wanting. I called around and finally started to get some contacts. I was alternating between CW and SSB. I did really well with CW – even getting some other Ohio parks which is a requirement – but SSB is where the contacts come from in this contest, I think.
Which brings me back to my personal style of operation. The evolution of my participation in the hobby and how I play radio when I’m in the park has been interesting for me. My current style is a far cry from the digital only operating I did when I first got started. In some ways, I’m glad I did that first. It’s not trivial to get a digital field station running smoothly and reproducibly. In fact, given the specific posts on my blog that get hit again and again, it’s difficult. I got that knocked out early and I still practice it, but it’s not what I go to the field to do when I want to relax. For me, that’s now CW.
My opinion today is that CW is engaging and relaxing. I run about 16 wpm. I’m not out there to make 150 contacts each session. I go for about 90 minutes or so most of the time – depending on the weather (space and terrestrial). I really enjoy the rhythm of a CW QSO and the surprises that it brings along. Grabbing the occasional DX with 5 watts is a thrill! And while the POTA exchange is pretty dry, it’s still entertaining enough that I keep going back to it. It’s like playing mahjong on my iPad; the same, but different each time.
The elephant on the table is that I still don’t love working phone. I don’t know that I ever will. But I did feel more comfortable this year for OSPOTA and I got into a pretty good rhythm with my fellow activators and hunters. It’s also clear that if I want to bag a lot of contacts, I need to do more of that. I’m sure I will as the winter descends and I start working more with the IC-7100 in the Jeep. Having 100 watts sitting there is attractive when it’s cold out and you want to hurry things along.
The Hardrock-50
I love this piece of gear. That’s partially because I built it from a kit and partially because it’s just a really great amp. It has everything I want and nothing that I don’t need. The built in ATU is fantastic and it pairs nicely with the IC-705.
It does get hot. The manufacturer mentions that you’re going to see it hit 140dF sometimes on the display. And that’s just fine! Well, it is until it isn’t, I guess. So to mitigate that, I picked up a USB powered mini-fan to set on top of it. This is probably the jankiest solution to the problem, but it dropped the temperature from 140dF or so to 89dF in a couple of minutes. It’s quiet and doesn’t generate any RF noise. It was also pretty inexpensive. I really need it when I use the HR50 in the hot summer months. It’s a good little guy to keep in the big box I take when I do this kind of operating.
Highlights
I had a few really exciting moments. One was a phone contact with OE6MMD. It is VERY RARE for me to get a call that starts with O. Austria? From the middle of Ohio? At about 20 watts? Sweet! Ron was very, very patient and repeated his call about a dozen times for me. We were on 20M and it was a bit noisy. Thanks Ron!
I also had a great time doing a little hunting. This year’s rules required any station in a park to make 4 park-to-park contacts with other Ohio park stations. The real magic of this contest is to make lots and lots of park to park contacts. I don’t have a great NVIS setup (maybe next year?) so grabbing Ohio parks can be a bit dicey. I did get what I needed on 40M, but I’d like to get more next time around.
QSO Map
This map includes FT8 contacts from before the contest as well as all of my submitted SSB and CW contacts. It felt like I was doing really well to TX and points west. I even got 3 provinces along with my Austrian contact! Not too shabby!
The QSO Map for the activation of US-1989 by KC8JC.
Final
I didn’t take many pictures on this trip. It was a quiet one and my wife and our Rottie and I just kind of hung out. Not everything is a photo op, I guess.
The contest was fun, as always. I really enjoyed grabbing over 100 contacts in the time I was on the air. One of these years, I will kilo this park, but not this one.
Thanks for reading along and I hope to hear you on the air!
73!
