I’ve been using this set of paddles for my activations for a while now and I just thought I’d toss this out there.

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 enj...

A New State (Commonwealth) I was first licensed as KC3JXQ and the 3 gives it away. I lived in Pennsylvania, but that was before I got into POTA and started getting out and activating. It didn't...

Intro For the past few years, our family has gone to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a week of camping and relaxing in some of the most beautiful places along Lake Superior. I'm a Great Lak...

A Nice Ride This week both the terrestrial and solar weather were in agreement that I could bike out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park - US-0020 for an activation. I've been keeping my cycling c...

Yes, I'm Still A Ham It's been quiet around the blog, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been out and playing radio. With the weather turning into real spring and temperatures that are above ...

Back To The Park The temperature was supposed to hit close to 60dF on a cloudy Tuesday in early March and that just screams GET TO THE PARK! I had a lot to do that morning, but I wasn't going t...

The First Activation of 2025: Solitude It was absolutely silent and completely deserted at West Branch SP - K-1999 on 19-Jan. It was Sunday morning at about 10:00 local time and the temperature...

Brought To You By… This post is about building a QRP Labs QMX+ transceiver. No, Hans G0UPL didn't sponsor this. Someone else made it possible. That someone else is Brandon Sanderson aka BrandoS...

Support Your Parks! Every quarter, the Parks On The Air folks have an event called Support Your Parks Weekend. The idea is to get out to the park at least once a quarter, right? I see it as jus...

An Activation With An Up And Coming Mode I've been pretty active on the Mastodon radio community for a while and I've noticed that there are a lot of operators using a mode called Single Side B...

Ah, The TR-45L... The TR-45L next to the Begali Traveler on a tarp. I will go out on a limb and say that if we were to poll every person who purchased the Penntek TR-45L and those operators...

QRP Rigs Are Fun My interest in POTA and portable operation has evolved as I've spent more and more time in this wonderful hobby. I've said before, and I will say again, that POTA leads to QRP ...

A Long Weekend I had the opportunity to take Friday off, so I did. And with a day off and no commitments until much later, I headed out to The Octagon at Cuyahoga Valley National Park - US-0020...

Gorgeous Weather It was sunny and the temperature was darned near perfect for June in NE Ohio. My wife and I got on our bikes and cycled out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park - US-0020 so that w...

You Read That Right It was a dessert activation. Monday nights are Scout meetings so I figured I could sneak out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park - US-0020 and get an activation in after dinner...

Weeks Without POTA? The past couple of weeks have been very busy and kept me away from my beloved parks and activations. Life is like that sometimes and we have to muscle through it. When I saw...

Something New-ish? Cuyahog Valley National Park - US-0020 is a massive park. It stretches a good way between Cleveland and Akron. There are over 100 miles of hiking trails scattered throughout ...

Getting Out To Support The Parks One of my favorite things in amateur radio is obviously getting out to the parks and participating in POTA as an activator. It's also pretty clear that I really...

Amazing Weather! The entire weekend was about picture perfect. The sun was out. There was a nice breeze. It was warm but not hot. We did have a little work to do with some plumbing on Saturday,...

Vacation Time! The kids hit Spring Break for the last week of March and I took the week off to hang out with them. Of course, that means a little bit of camping because as a family that's what ...

The Weather Isn't Why I Live Here That's not an entirely true statement. I've lived in places where the weather was far, far worse but there is something about having a bright, sunny, gorgeous ...

On Being Invisible Late last week, I was made aware of some concerns that the POTA team were having relayed to them by various official agencies about the poor behavior of activators in parks a...

The Thing About NE Ohio… There are fun facts about NE Ohio that no one talks about because, well, not a lot of people talk about life in NE Ohio. For those of us who live here one of those litt...

Cabin Fever It’s real. Working from home full time makes it a bit worse. There are sometimes three day stretches where I don’t leave the house in the winter. It’s nice to be able to stay warm a...

Support Your Parks! Anyone into POTA probably knows that there is a weekend event each quarter called "Support Your Parks" where anyone who gets an activation in or hunts an activator on that w...

Out Into The Weather I mentioned my wife's hiking challenge in my last post. It's still going strong and her team is doing well. Part of that is getting out every weekend and hiking both Saturd...

Wrapping Up Vacation During my time off for the holidays, I got in 6 activations. I've been writing them up in pairs and so it only makes sense to put out this last report for 2023 and the firs...

How Did That Happen? There were a lot of things stacked against doing an activation on the 27th. First and foremost, it's my wife's birthday so she sets the tone for the day. Having a birthday ...

A Little Time Off With the holidays upon us, I find myself looking for time to get outside and get on the air. This week has been a good one for it with two activations (so far) that landed in ...

What IS That Thing? December in Northeast Ohio is usually marked by leaden grey skies. It's usually cold, windy, and the days are almost as short as they're going to get for the year. It's a ti...

Peace and Quiet in Deceptive Weather Saturday, December 09 was not what was promised by all of my various weather apps. On a day when the sun was supposed to make an appearance and it was suppo...

There was a lot of bouncing around the week before with work travel, so when Saturday hit, I was ready to unwind. My family, naturally, had Scouting activities that were going to keep them wrappe...

Many years ago now, my family lived in Houston, TX. We were very into the State Park scene there and we spent a lot of time camping and hiking across the parks of Texas. One of our favorites was ...

Some Time Off This past week was Thanksgiving in the U.S. and I decided to take off Monday - Wednesday to pair up with the holidays that were already on the calendar for Thursday and Friday. It...

My birthday turned out to be a fantastic day in terms of November weather for NE Ohio. It was sunny and the sky was perfectly clear. The temperatures were in the mid to upper 40s and there was th...

A picture of a 95 pound Rottweiler named Bella in profile. She's such a good girl! Fun Rottweiler Facts! There are some things that people don't understand about Rottweilers. Some of those ...

About one weekend every month, my house empties out for the weekend. My wife, who is an Assistant Scoutmaster, and our two kids go off on a camping adventure. I stay home to take care of the dogs...

The forecast for the week was just too good. It was warm and the sun was out. Friday was set to be in the 70s with mostly blue skies and light breezes and that's exactly what it was. I took the d...

Almost Too Good To Be True The ending days of October in Ohio come with unpredictable weather. Last weekend it was in the 30s and 40s with high winds and rain. Suddenly, the sun returned and te...

Ah That Beautiful Autumn Weather It's that time of the year where Northeast Ohio reminds us that it's going to be cold and miserable for a bit. There was a good amount of rain on Saturday and t...

Bachelor Weekend! This past weekend was one where my son and I were living the bachelor life as the ladies were off camping. Given that my son is a big time sleep in kind of guy, I took the opp...

A Perfect Day To Activate The First of October was a truly beautiful Sunday. The sky was clear and it was in the mid-60dF range. There was a light breeze and I didn't care what the solar weathe...

In the past, I've used posts here to motivate myself to get outside and enjoy my hobby in the parks. The blog acts as a journal of sorts to capture things like weather, general conditions, and an...

Some days, things end up in such a way as to allow us a little more space. On other days, we have to make that space. In either case, when it's time to take a minute, it's time. So it was on this...

As July comes to a close, we're starting to see the calendar ramp up for the back to school season in our house. That means that my phone is always covered in new things being added to the calend...

The last couple of weeks of July in NE Ohio are when everyone seems to empty out and head to a vacation destination. School will kick off for the kids earlier than usual this year, so everyone is...

The Warthog! I took a day off from work and having cleared some time off at home, found myself in the position to have the better part of a day to do a rove. I've been thinking about this for a...

Learning The Code Learning CW is, like most most skill acquisition processes, a journey. It reminds me a great deal of learning a musical instrument. There are times when it's nothing but a gri...

It was a weeked of time spent outdoors. The sun was there, the breeze was good, and the weather held all through Saturday and most of Sunday. It is a glorious time to live in the part of the worl...

The start of the cycling season was a rough one. Within a seven day stretch there were 4 different tubes replaced on the bike. The roads and trails seemed littered with things bent on causing pun...

With it being Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. I decided to take Friday off. The weather in NE Ohio is only like this for a small slice of the year and given that it wasn’t raining or grey, it wa...

It was a Friday afternoon. I took half the day off to deal with a few things that were time sensitive. They were taken care of well ahead of when I thought they would be, so I found something to ...

Monday evenings around our house are usually busy. My family has a standing activity and I use that time to get things done or sometimes to read in the quiet for a moment. Last night, however, I ...

The CW 100 Days challenge continues and this is the halfway mark. It seemed to make sense to look at where things were when it kicked off and where they are now. Also, what it might look like by ...

The Challenge The date of this posting is day 31 (for me) of the CW100Days Challenge started on Mastodon by F1RUM. Part of the community and accountability of the hashtag is to post a daily upd...

Over on Mastodon.Radio the operator known as F1RUM decided to throw out a hashtag and invited people to keep him motivated on his journey to CW proficiency and enhance focus on their own journies...

I wasn't sure that I would actually get serious about my CW practice this year, though proficiency has been a goal for me for some time. But a few a weeks ago, someone pointed to a couple of apps...

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about a script that I cobbled together to pull live activator data from the POTA website and push to a console and to the Mac notifications (assuming I hit a statio...

In the course of my life, I have found that in various pursuits, I tend to favor things that have some challenge to them. This was true with my selection of pieces to learn for the guitar when I ...