This day was like any other day, I had not really planned on activating a park, but the radio was in the truck and I was there and I had about 2 hours… sooooo.
It all started on Father’s Day weekend and I was going up to scout a location for the next morning to shoot a sunrise photo or two with my daughter for father day. I was already in Chattanooga nd had a few hours to either go shoot street photos in the noon day sun or I could check out a place called Snooper’s rock… I chose the later.
After a nice 30 minute drive, I arrived at the WMA (Wildlife Management Area) to scope out the location and found that the spot for the AM photo op was easy to access and it left me with plenty of time to actually get on the air. SO then I start looking for a suitable location to string up a wire for an antenna this is where I started running into problems, the trees around the parking lot were dense and had a lot of underbrush preventing me from throwing a line pretty much at all. So I start driving down the side roads till I find one that has a pull off and the woods are fairly open allowing me to get the throw line up into a tree without too much trouble.
The antenna was running 64 degrees north east… is this area of the compass all that I am allowed to use??? LOL I go to a different park in a DIFFERENT STATE and the antenna direction is almost identical to Cloudland!!! Anyway, it was run over a limb and went back down towards the ground at the far end where I tied it to a tree. I figured that my low antenna would be offset by the fact that I was on top of a mountain and finished setting up the radio station.
This time, instead of getting out the ICOM 705 I decided to use my old time QRP rig that I have had for many years…. the vaunted Elecraft K1/4 with internal antenna tuner. I love this old radio for no particular reason other than it is cool. I just like using it for some reason.
I didnt want to spend a lot of time messing with the settings so I ran it as I have always ran it, with a straight key. If you will notice the straight key is home brew, I made this key out of scrap materials in my machine shop so I could have a simple key for when I did field activations. This key is very usable and is easy to use on the air. It is also a great conversation starter as well ha ha. Another thing to note about this set up is that I do not need an external antenna tuner to run this rig. Since it has an internal antenna tuner in the radio I simply connect the antenna connector straight to the radio and get on the air.
With the radio set up I quickly got on the air and did a little hunting first. I fairly quickly got a couple of park to park contacts one being a special event station and then I moved to 17 m where I made three or 4 QSO contacts then the band kind of fizzled out and I moved to 20 m where all the ham radio operators seemed to be. In pretty short order I had a completed activation and was able to get off the air so that I could go meet the wife for lunch.
All in all it was a really great quick sample and sweet activation of a new park for me in Tennessee 73s and I hope to see you on the air soon de WK4DS