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. I just couldn’t think of a better way to spend a few hours in the quiet before…
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 made for a good, long stretch out of the office. It also provided the opportunity to get out…
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 while so the hard work of looking at the map and seeing that I…
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 Friday and Saturday. But when Sunday rolled around, the temperatures hit the mid-40s and the wind relaxed a…
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 from the road. There were signs for a State Park and with a view like that…
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. With few options for getting to someplace fun, it ended up being a Jeep activation. Once again, the Chameleon…
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 list of places that are close and could be worked from the trail or the parking lot….
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 cold out. No precipitation, but it was a far cry from the weather of Saturday. I put the Chameleon…
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 tightly and still hit vairables like propagation and even the whims of other operators. It’s a wild ride every time…
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 and thus January was out. So this weekend, The Big Plan was to get outdoors and activate a park….