It's Been A Minute… It occurred to me that I haven't been posting to ye olde blogge very often and I think that is largely because Life is doing that Life Thing where time is at a premium and I...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 short report this time as there isn't much to say about this one. My wife and I had a weekend to ourselves and we love to get out and ride. Our favorite destination is still Cuyahoga Valley Nat...

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...

There are as many ways to enjoy this hobby as there are people enjoying it. Plenty of categories for one to assign to one's self. There are contesters. There are DXers. There are experimenters an...

Last week was big for my family. My wife and daughter were at camp while my son and I held down the fort and fed the dogs. With the ladies home safe and sound, and knowing that it was Support You...

With all of the fun and adventure of our week plus in the U.P. I was afraid that it would be a bit of a downer coming back to the same old, same old. Happy to report that is not the case. After u...

The Plan This year, we decided to do a similar trip to what we did last year. We packed up the camper and headed to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for some time close to Lake Superior. We had ...

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 ...

Making My Own Problems On an average spring to fall weekend in NE Ohio what I want to do is get on my bike, ride to the park, and get on the air. I’ve done that for about a year now and it’s be...

Support Your Parks Weekend is a seasonal event run by the folks at Parks On The Air. Since getting into POTA, I've been trying to activate and hunt for each of the events as they pass. More than ...

It took a minute, but it works. The last week or so has been a lot of fun diving into some software and tweaking things to get them where I need them to be. There are some really great free opt...

After all of the work in getting my computer setup for field work again, I was itching to get outside. Easter Sunday presented a very nice opportunity. The weather was stunning. It was in the mid...

There are plenty of jokes about POTA devotees checking maps before going on vaction for new parks to activate along the way. In this case, my family decided that we'd spend spring break at Mammot...

The day was just too nice. It was in the mid-50s and the skies were clear. There was a lot of wind, which isn't always great, but staying inside simply wasn't an option. Originally, I wasn't goin...

Sunday afternoon it got up into the mid-40sF and was bright and sunny. It's the kind of sunlight that warms a person who is sitting in it. One might even be able to ditch the coat for a little wh...

Right after I finished posting my last entry, I learned that my family was essentially going off in different directions. It was sunny out and the temperatures were in the mid-to-upper 40sF and t...

With a long holiday weekend, I thought I would get to the park more than I did. The weather was not at all interested in cooperating. It was sitting in the 20s with some significant wind on Frida...

Every year, PCARS hosts a club contest for QRP operations in February. Astute readers of the blog will note that the last one was in…November? Of 2022? Well, things happened back in February of 2...

Northeast Ohio has always been grey and nasty through the winter. At least that's been the case as long as I've been here. There's not really any point in being down about it. It's the state of t...

In NE Ohio, real winter is in January and February. The world gets cold. The skies are grey. That giant orb of light in the sky that we see all summer? It fades into memory. The stuff of stories ...

Monday was MLK Day. There was, surprisingly, nothing on the calendar for the household. No service projects. No Scouting events. Nothing. Just a cold, clear day in January. Without much thought, ...

The grey of the week was oppressive. People may not know it, but for Seattle's reputation for grey skies, NE Ohio beats it for cloud cover over the course of a year. Honestly? It can get heavy af...

It was a long bit of time off for me this holiday. I grabbed what amounted to about two weeks of time off and spent most of it with my family around the house. It was a wonderfully low-key holida...

It has started to get chilly here in NE Ohio. Not a surprise for December. I had a long week and decided that the thing that I really needed to do was get out in the field. There is a wonderful s...

A very brief field report. On the 26th, my wife, the puppy, and I went back to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park - K-0020 for a dog walk and a little radio. The weather was almost too nice. It wa...

Well, I did it. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t hit the Oasis Activator award for K-0020 this year, but my long birthday weekend brought it so close that a quick trip out to the park the day be...

It was a big week for me with a milestone birthday and all, so I took a couple of days off that led to a four day weekend. I activated Cuyahoga Valley National Park - K-0020 on the 17th and just ...

November 17 and 18 are off days in my world to celebrate my circumnavigating the sun one more time. And what does it mean when there is time off? POTA, my friends. POTA. Nothing but POTA. All day...

There is probably a strong case to make Cuyahoga Valley National Park - K-0020 a topic of its own on this blog since all of the posts about POTA operations of late have been about it. Or so it se...

Time to title these posts differently, I think… My family was otherwise occupied this past Saturday, so I did the only thing that made sense: I loaded up my bike and cycled off to Cuyahoga Vall...

Before I left for NC, I spent some time on the POTA site looking for parks close to my hotel. On the drive down, Pilot Mountain was something I passed along the way. It was really pretty to see f...

The last time I traveled for work was in 2019, which was before the POTA bug got into me. This past week, I traveled by Jeep to NC for some meetings. I naturally added my IC-705 and assorted bits...

It was a windy Saturday morning with plenty of sunshine. Naturally, ones thoughts turn to cycling and a trip to the park. Why not toss the radio into the panniers and ride? Why not indeed! That...

A mid-week activation! Something that's important to note is that I work from home. Given the weird nature of my gig and meetings and a team that spans the globe, sometimes my work hours get st...

So it's starting to look like I only ever go to one spot. That's not really the case, but I am trying to get the Repeat Offender Activator award for Cuyahoga Valley National Park - K-0020. There ...

It was a Saturday morning and a great time for an activation out at my favorite spot: Cuyahoga Valley National Park - K-0020. Yes, yet again, my wife and I got on our bikes and rode out to the pa...

This past weekend was a good one for radio. I managed to squeak in two activations of Cuyahoga Valley National Park - K-0020. Along with that, I tried something new with my mast and my bike. On...

And we're back to Cuyahoga Valley National Park - K-0020. As has become our custom, my wife and I got on the bikes again and rode out to have a good morning on the trail. And, as usual. I brought...

OSPOTA 2022 The first Saturday after Labor Day each year is the Ohio State Parks On The Air contest (OSPOTA). For me, 2022 has been a year of POTA and being as I’m really into it and it’s spons...

This biking thing is getting fun. A quick zip out the the Cuyahoga Valley National Park [K-0020] and back isn't a big deal. On the Saturday in question, my wife and I decided to head out. It was ...

My wife and I have been big on the cycling thing since we acquired our new bikes. Since the previous weekend's trip to Cuyahoga Valley National Park [K-0020] was so much fun, we decided to do it ...

It's been a while since my last trip out to a park for an activation. This time of year, things get really busy and it's hard to make time to get out to a park for a bit. So I intentionally put t...

On Sunday, 24-Jul I decided to run out and grab a quick activation while everyone else was doing something else. I headed out to Wingfoot State Wildlife Area [K-9518]. It was warm and a bit humid...

The Support Your Parks event for POTA enthusiasts was the weekend of 15-17 July, 2022. I got out for it in the spring and decided to go out to support the effort. I only had a couple of hours to ...

Since we got a camper, we started spending time with Hipcamp. It's a place where you can find private campgrounds. In essence, someone has a chunk of land and they set it up for camping and rent ...

My family decided that we would take our camper on its first big vacation trip and that our destination would be the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My last trip up that way was many, many years ago...

My family took our first trip out in our new camper. Naturally, I took the radio along. We were in a private campground on the OH/PA border. Literally on the border. Walking on the street had us ...

I headed out this weekend twice. The first was out to Wingfoot Lake State Park [K-3516]. I got there Saturday afternoon and prepared for a Jeep activation in the parking lot because, well, there ...

An Easter activation! We got home from our muddy camping trip and decided to, well, go out to another park. This time it was Portage Lakes State Park [K-1984]. As my son would say, "Literally 198...

My wife and I decided that Easter weekend would be a good one for a camping trip. It turned out to be a quick one and one that we did without the kids because, well, they do a lot of camping with...

The Triangle Lake Bog State Nature Preserve [K-9439] is only a few miles from my house. In fact, it's not too far from the Kent Bog that I activated the previous weekend. I've had this one on the...

The Cooperrider-Kent Bog State Nature Preserve is a very small park near my house and seemed like a natural place to go to grab a quick activation. I arrived Sunday morning and it was grey and co...

My last trip into the field was to activate Tinker’s Creek State Park [K-1997] and it ended in a cold, wet mess with only 4 contacts in the log. This Saturday, I wanted to settle the score and ge...

When I looked at the weather going up to the weekend, I thought that the weather would be cold with a touch of snow, perhaps, and that would drive people out of the park. Which park? Any park. Ti...

I took Friday off and managed to get out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park (K-0020) for a bit with my wife and her dog. I decided to leave The Mighty Nacho at home as the weather was questionable ...

With a couple of failed activation attempts behind me, I decided to turn my park trips into experiments. Last week, I tried a different approach to my Jeep mounted MP1. That didn't really do much...

This was supposed to be a quick trip out to Wingfoot Lake State Park (K-3516). The variables for this operation were narrowed to simply making 10 FT8/FT4 contacts. I will lead with this: yet agai...

Another set of experiments and another list of lessons that were learned through experience. Part of the joy of ham radio is in the challenges that it provides. One can dial in the gear very tigh...

This year I have several Stupid Arbitrary Goals that center on radio. One of them is a number of portable operations and the other is activating parks. I decided on these SAGs later than I might ...

I'm not a New Years Resolutions kind of a guy, but I do keep a running list of goals that I review every month. It's a habit I got into years ago, and while it's rather silly, I do it anyway. So ...

Portable operation has been a lot of fun for me since the IC-705 showed up in my shack. It's a really great QRP rig and I have had a wonderful time getting out and making contacts. One of the thi...

Display table with a MS Surface Go 2 tablet and IC-705 running WSJT-X. This past weekend, PCARS went out to the Akron Maker Faire to show off ham radio. We put a SuperAntenna up on the roof...

Saturday mornings have, for the time being, been set up as portable operating times for me. There are several parks in the area - Ohio seems to have an embarrassment of riches in that regard - an...

When the summer was just rolling around, I ordered a SOTABeams Tactical Mini mast for portable operation. It seemed to stall out in Chicago (as a lot of things traveling into the states are) and...

This past Saturday, I took a couple of hours to go and operate from my Jeep in a park parking lot. It was a bit of a last minute expedition, so I didn't have any real objectives other than to try...

Monday, July 05 was a holiday for me, so it made sense to head out into the field for a little radio fun. The IC-705 and assorted gear were already in their pack and ready to go. The destination ...

Each summer, my family tries to book a cabin in the middle of nowhere so we can go hiking, paddling, and fishing. In recent years, our favorite spot in central Pennsylvania was sold and we starte...

Backpack, mAT-705, Lightsaver Max, IC-705, MS Surface Go 2, and my dad's water. On Memorial Day, my dad (AC8NT) and I headed out to Hampton Hills Metropark to see if we could get some conta...

The post I made about the mAT-705 antenna tuner was a bit rough on the unit in retrospect. I regretted the purchase because the mAT-705+ came out shortly thereafter and answered my issue of havin...

With the usual tip of the cap to OH8STN I dug in on the v1.24 firmware of the IC-705 to rid my field setup of yet another cable. I think I'm about as close to field nirvana as I'm going to get. S...

The mAT-705 next to the IC-705 (on a tripod) Antenna tuners are a thing to have, right? If you're going to use a less than adequate antenna or just a random piece of wire, a tuner is going ...

Your IC-705 will NOT look like this when you're getting GPS data. I'm slowly stepping my way through all that the IC-705 has to offer. I still consider myself quite a new ham, so there are ...

I love bags. I really do. I have different shapes and sizes for a number of applications. I skew toward Kelty for backpacks for camping because they seem to fit me well. I have a Maxpedition slin...