I got an opportunity to activate a state park a long way from home. I went to Savannah GA on business and we stayed in an airBNB. Well, this BNB was just two short miles from a designated POTA site, how could I let THAT slip through my fingers?!?! Sometimes the best experience is the spontaneous one.
I had brought a couple of radios (TR-35 & IC-705) and antennas (40m EFHW kit and a 20m Hamstick) with me with the hopes of setting up on the beach one day for a little while, so I chose my IC-705 and the 20 meter hamstick antenna as these are the fastest to deploy. I only had an hour or so and wanted to maximize my time on the radio.
Fort McAllister is a tiny park and has a campground in a gated area. It is well kept and has a museum on site. The museum was closed by the time I got done playing on the radio so I can’t speak for it, but it was nice on the outside…
Did I mention that it was raining due to a tropical storm? Yeah, it was. Alot. So to keep the rain out of my BNC connections I fabricated a drip cover to keep the rain at bay for the time I was going to be activating the park.
What your looking at is a bag with both ends cut out from a pack of peanuts. Lol. I slid it over the connector and then taped it on with electrical tape for my temporary seal. It worked long enough to get the activation in without my SWR getting crazy so it must have done the job.
I also pretty much had the whole park to myself since it was raining. This was awesome as nobody was there to trip over my antenna and I could pick the best place to setup.
What you see is one of the two counter poise wires held in position by a stainless steel weight at the end. This worked way better than I thought it would to be quite honest. This rig goes up in just a couple of minutes and requires zero tools. Quite literally two minutes and the coax is at the radio. Propagation is good too, just look at the qso chart below. It is on 20 meters with 5watts so there nearest contact is about 425 mile to Nashville TN. If I ever get the 40 meter version put together, I should get some closer stuff, at least that is the idea. Lol.
Although not as compact as the TR-35 I have been using, the IC-705 has a mountain of features that the little TR-35 just doesn’t have. Things like 8 message memories, an SWR meter, a output power meter, and tons of modes the other little rig just can’t do. I also like it since it is super easy to just operate with. It will run on the rear mounted battery but I made up a cigarette lighter cord with Anderson Powerpoles on the other end. I just plug my radio into my truck when operating like this and I am off to the races.
It didn’t take long to get a bite either. I started the memory keyer calling cq while I went to enter a spot on the POTA page and immediately got a call back way even before I got the spot up on the site! That was when I knew it was gonna be a good day. I logged 37 QSOs in, right at, 40 minutes, which is awesome! I was basically at a good stopping point when I cleared all the calls and the rain let up and I had made an official activation so I went QRT and packed up to go eat supper.
Two pages of QSOs is a good day for me. Thank you to all the hunters out there for listening for my CQ. It was a good outing because of you.
72
WK4DS
David