Here is the AAR for two separate activations over a two day period at the same park. This is Cold Mountain State Gameland near Waynesville NC. K-6895. It is a great place to do some vehicle mounted POTA and I recommend it.
In this photo above you can see the entrance to the parking lot and how small this area is. I also ran out a single radial on the first trip as I was only going to be on 20 meters as this park doesn’t have cell coverage. I also didn’t know how well I would be able to do with this park as I did literally zero scouting before hand. I scheduled the activation as I wasn’t sure about cell service and this turned out to be a good thing.
I have learned to search out parking lots that are fully within the park boundaries. I do this by pulling the park up on a couple of map applications and then zooming in on the roads around them and scouring these areas for parking lots. Just like in these two screen shots I found the park boundaries pass over Lake Logan road a few times and upon closer inspection, I found what I was searching for… A parking lot within the park boundaries that I can operate out of the truck with is a luxury that I love to land on if at all possible. I didn’t take a man portable rig this time as I wasn’t thinking about POTA being the main reason for this trip but rather something to do if the weather got bad or I just got a hankering for some radio time (which is what happened)…
The radio for today was the sBitx v2 and I am learning more and more about it as I use it. The message memory is really nice with this machine. I really like the whole process of operating CW with this radio and FT8 as well. It is almost effortless. The dev that wrote the code for this radio is working on a v3 release… I guess is the version. I am not sure what version we are on at this point to be honest, but it does have a couple of issues that make it less fun to use at times, but to be honest about it I have had a blast with this radio.
Day 1 was nice because there wasnt anyone except a fly fisherman who was down in the river. Here you can see the radial ran out to the side.
Since I had come to this park and didnt know much about it other than it was a game reserve, it was nice to see that amateur radio wasn’t on the prohibited list of activities. Lol. Keep those activations low key and it probably won’t get added too.
Things got dark in a hurry since it was overcast as well. I ended up finishing the activation by flashlight. Here is a photography trick for you. Dont point the light directly at the thing you are using (here it is the logbook) but point it at the ceiling and the light will bounce back and fill the area making it easier to see and work.
Day 2…
The next day showed more fishermen than the previous day but still there was plenty of room to put out some wire radials. Today I wanted to get on 30 meters and see what I could do as the band was open… or so I thought. So I put out the radials for 30 meters and since they would reach the trees, I ran then horizontal from the antenna mount to see how they would perform as elevated radials. Turns out that was a terrible idea, the SWR was horrendous so I started playing with them a little. I next just laid them in the grass to do it the lazy way and the SWR still wasnt great, better but still fairly high. Lastly, I put down a stake and pulled just one wire taught and BAM 1:1 SWR! Seriously, that was all I had to do???
So I also scheduled this activation as well, but unbeknownst to me, I failed to convert local time to UTC time so the schedule was way off. So I was running dark mode. I called CQ on 30 meters and in ten minutes or so had made a whopping 2 contacts. At one poi t someone tunes up on top of me and starts calling cq as well! Lol. So I figured I would switch over to FT8 and see if the time was still synced well enough for it to work. Ten minutes into this I had successfully made two more QSOs for the log.
At this point I switch antennas and get on 20 meters CW and start calling CQ. I actually think at this point that the spot was working and there just wasnt anyone on 30 meters as I started getting QSOs in the log like normal but then it just fell off again and I decided to try 20meters FT8 and see what would happen and again I only made a couple of QSOs. Not sure why but it is what it is. I am happy at this point as I have the activation in the bag but still have a ton of time so I go back to 30 meters and the waterfall is covered up in activity. I am stoked! I setup and strt calling CQ… and I call…and I call and FINALLY I get an answer.
Over the next 12 minutes or so I work 3 contacts withthe band covered in activity. So I simply ask W4ELP if he would spot me and he said he would. Thank you Ed for the spot because you can see what one simple little thing loke a spot on the POTA website can do for an activation. QSO #19 is Ed and in about 35 minutes had made 19 contacts. This is awesome considering the lack of a spot on the network. As you can see, having the spot though got the word out and I quickly added another 36 QSOs to the log with a couple coming with nice little pile ups.
I learned a valuable lesson today in the I need to check the time on my scheduled activation carefully so it happens at the time I am there. Lol. The next one did happen right. Just like the Smokey Mtn National Park one. The RBN works great and scheduled activations making not having internet access a moot point. This is a fairly new practice for me so I plan to use it more in the future.
All in all I had a great trip to Cold Mountain and will probably go back the next time I go to Maggie Valley to photograph the elk heard since it is so close to the motel. Thanks for coming along and I hope to work you soon!
WK4DS
73