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...

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...

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 ...

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 th...

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 ...

QRP Fun with PCARS Every year, the Portage County Amateur Radio Service - aka PCARS - hosts a QRP contest at Fred Fuller Park in Kent, Ohio. This tradition goes back many years and it's always ...

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...

Circumstances It's mid-November and that happens to coincide with my birthday. In my semi-retired state, I have most days to myself after the kids are off to school. Sure, I have chores to do a...

Ah, The Weather October isn't usually kind enough to grant days in the 70dF range here in NE Ohio. The past few weeks have been really good for that. Sunny, clear days with leaves in high color...

Jamboree On The Air I'm an Eagle Scout. I was very, very into the program as a kid and both of my children are involved in Scouting. Since I got my amateur radio license, I've tried to help out...

Big Changes This isn't a blog where I share everything that happens in my day to day life. The purpose here is to document the fun and challenges of my amateur radio hobby. But a hobby does int...

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...

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,...

What Are We Doing? This blog exists for me to catalog sucesses and failures. The other thing it does is provide me with a place to put things so that I can get to them no matter where I am assu...

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 ...

This Activation Was Quick Look, not every trip to the park is a walk in the park. Something like that. Sometimes, it's really cold, really windy, there are whitecaps on the reservoir and everyt...

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...

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...

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...

We had a chance to make a quick ride out to the park, so we took it. Here in NE Ohio, we're going to be running short on nice days for good cycling, so we're going to grab all of them that we can...

Ohio State Parks On The Air was 09-Sep this year as it always falls on the first Saturday after Labor Day. It's a contest whose primary purpose is to get operators out into the State Parks of Ohi...

Monday, 04-Sep-2023 Labor Day weekend had some really nice weather this time around, if a bit muggy. We decided to take Monday and ride out to the park. I took along my gear to sneak in an acti...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

It's been about a month since I started doing all of my Winlink Wednesday check-ins using the Pat + Ardop toolchain. It's been remarkably successful. I have transitioned away from Windows-Only so...

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 ...

This is the time of year that tries my patience. The weather can be gorgeous one day and miserable the next. After a week of grey and on and off rain, there was finally a break in the clouds. The...

After my switch over to Ubuntu on my Surface Go 2, I went on the hunt for a way to continue my Winlink Wednesday check-ins and, more importantly, maintain my ability to use email from the field. ...

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...

"Broken Window" by akeg is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. A Little History A couple of years back, I decided that I wanted to spend more time on the air and less time playing around with IT non...

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...

This past Sunday, the weather was supposed to be in the mid-40F range and clear with something call "The Sun" in the sky. I seemed to remember this yellow orb from my childhood and thought that i...

A few months back, I hit a real snag in my Winlink setup. At some point, my Surface GO 2 - post Win11 update - created a situation with Winlink where I couldn't get the window to open reliably wh...

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 ...

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...

So I snuck out to the park Friday and I figured that would be all the activating I could get in for the weekend. But I forgot about the time change as we leave DST behind. When our Rottie slapped...

Each year, the Portage County Amateur Radio Service aka PCARS hosts a QRP “contest” at Fred Fuller Park in Kent, OH. It usually occurs in February, but because of many, many factors, it was delay...

There are some days when the stars align just right. This was already set to be a big weekend for radio, but I managed to squeak out some time after work and before my family left for a Scouting ...

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 ...

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 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...

This weekend wasn’t a great one for portable operations in NE Ohio. The weather was cold and rainy. As someone who spends a lot of time outside, I get that there is No Bad Weather, Only Bad Gear....

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 ...

Desktop showing a Winlink success message after a VARA HF session. This weekend, I took some time to look at my setup for Winlink. This has been on my Radio List for a while now and I’m not s...

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...

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 ...

OK, OK, OK... My wife tells me that I have a "Bag Problem." I like to think of it as having the right tool for the job. That said, I've been playing around with a million different configurations...

IC-705 with homebrew battery box "Be Prepared" is the Scout Motto. It's not the slogan. The slogan is, "Do A Good Turn Daily." The difference is important. Both are important, but it's hard...

The adventures with the IC-705 continue! This week, I installed the most recent release candidate for FT8. It contains a listing for the IC-705 so it doesn't have to be spoofed. The application...

Working closely with technology for an extended period of time has colored my views on computing. I've gone from full-on, build it all myself or die to using whatever works reliably and jettisoni...

It's been over a year since my last post. There are reasons for that, not limited to a move to another state and a global pandemic. It certainly isn't because I'm not active in the radio hobby! I...