Out To The Woods
The Parks On The Air Support Your Parks weekends are always a great excuse to get out and operate at a park. I really feel that events like this force the issue with enough enjoyers of the hobby and really are valuable items on the calendar. I mean, if once a quarter you are forced to look at your portable rig and say, “OK! Let’s go!” then it’s worth the price of admissions (which is still $0 – or pretty close).
This year, it coincided with a weekend that my wife and I had tentatively booked for a final trip out in the camper. I always want to believe we’ll sneak in one more, but I know better. We decided to try a New-To-Us campsite and went with Pymatuning State Park – US-1407 – in Pennsylvania. Situated on a lake (reservoir) that straddles the state line with Ohio, there are state parks on both sides of the border. We picked PA because, pragmatically, there were more campsites available.
It’s a nice enough park. The facilities are great and the only complaint I have is that it backs up to a State Route and that means some traffic noise which tends to take me out of the moment. Under normal circumstances, I can see how that’s not a deterrent. The entire park is really about the water and this was, for many, a last hurrah for their boats. We didn’t have boats. Just a couple of Scouts, a Rottweiler, and some radio gear. Sounds good to me!
Be Prepared
It was the Jamboree On The Air weekend for the Scouts and for the first time in a long time I wasn’t participating with a group of Cub Scouts. My dad was pulling that duty and having a great time. I did have two Scouts with me, but we really didn’t think about it much. They were having too much fun doing other stuff like wrangling their new roommate – The Marbled Orb Weaver aka The Pumpkin Spider. Man, that thing was big enough to pay rent for sure! But also harmless to humans and just generally hanging out in the corner of their tent until I evicted it for them.
Now, I’m an Eagle Scout and I tend to think that I go into camping trips like this with enough experience to know what I need and how to get stuff done well. The fact is that after some wilderness experience, I know that I can live outside for 72 hours with no shelter or gear whatsoever. But that’s not the kind of camping we were doing, was it? No. It was not. We were glamping (mostly) and I had my radio to think about. So it was that I made my first mistake: I didn’t write down the number of the Park. Ya know, US-1407. The identifier I’d use on the air, etc.
Sigh.
The other thing that I didn’t do was schedule the activation on the POTA site so that their system would look for my signal on the Reverse Beacon Network and tell people that I was planning to be out there so maybe go look for me or spot me.
Two strikes.
There was, of course, not a single bar of cellular data to be had at the park so I did what any sensible operator would do: I went War Driving!
Remember that? Back in the day? Wandering around looking for open access points. Seeing how poorly people locked down their WiFi in those early days. No? Just me? Oh. OK.
I drove toward Jamestown, PA and by the time I spied a Dollar General store I had enough bandwidth to do what I needed. I grabbed a screenshot of the POTA page for the park and scheduled the activation. Then it was back to the camper (all of 3 miles away) and time to get on the air!
Getting On The Air
I set up my Chameleon whip with extension as I always do on a trip in the camper. It’s just so much easier than depending on trees or worrying about the dog getting tangled up in a wire antenna with assorted stuff. I can keep the antenna on the far side of the camper and spread the radials out where no one will step on them. I win all around.
Inside the camper, I had my trusty IC-705 and my Hardrock-50 amp. Why bring along the HR-50? Why not?! When I’m in the camper I feel like it’s luxury time. I could, in places where we have shore power, bring along the IC-7300 and have a good time. But I like giving the HR-50 a workout now and again and it reminds me of how all of my stuff works. It’s good to practice.
I started out doing some CW. I brought along my Begali paddles because, again, semi-glamping. Things were going very slowly. I got one contact before moving over to FT8. FT8 was good to me. I got enough to activate the park and then went back to CW a little later in the day and got enough to make me happy. It really is like fishing. I wanted to catch my limit with each mode.
I pulled out the headset and tried a little SSB, but after calling for about 30 minutes and not a single person coming back, I decided that I’d move on. I stuck with CW and FT8 for the rest of the trip.
With my Saturday activation in the bag, I grabbed a nap and we did stuff around the campsite. Knocking things off the list like dinner, etc. and enjoying telling jokes and reading books.
When the Zulu clock hit 00:00 I got back on the air. The night was young! I got another activation between FT8 and CW contacts. Life was good!
Scooping Up PDFs
I managed to grab my Late Shift Activator award for 100 QSOs. I landed the Support Your Parks Activator AND Hunter awards. And I got the Wiggins Acalypha Hunter award for 700 entities hunted. I don’t check these very often, so it’s fun to see them show up on my profile.
QSO Maps
Here’s what it looked like on the map.
Final
It was a great weekend to camp and a perfect weekend to get on the air. I love doing these events and I’m glad that I was able to toss another into the log.
Thanks for reading along and 73!
