Today was going to be a short activation, in and out and on to my street photography I was planning to do… Well, we all know how the best laid plans go, don’t we? Yeah, I didn’t go shoot street photos at all. lol.
Today was a typical day, I worked till noon, then sneaked away to go do some radio and photography. I grabbed the bag and realized my log book was full so I needed to grab a notebook at the store on the way to the park, that was the first thing that slowed me down. then there was a HUGE traffic jam on the interstate that forced me to take surface streets for half of the drive which basically doubled the drive time. So now I am an hour behind when I planned to start…
The next thing to happen was that the map software took me up to the W road. Which is quite harrowing if you have never driven up it before, there are YouTube videos about it if you want to know more. So I finally get to the parking area, which only has 4 spaces mind you, and there is ONE left! I took that as a sign that things were going to improve and set out searching for a location. I hiked down to the falls and took a couple of photos then started looking for a place to set up the antenna. So this is a wilderness area and not a park, this means that the usual manicured fields with picnic tables were conspicuously missing from this park entirely. Ummmm…. I didn’t bring a chair either. So I end up finding a small log on the side of the trail and a side trail that was off the beaten path somewhat. Another problem I didn’t anticipate was the dense underbrush that was at this location. This one thing alone almost made me just give up and go take photos instead, but I found a small clearing with a tree I could get to near the trail with a high limb so I gave it a shot, got a line up and pulled up the 30’ wire for a radiator since I planned on working 17 and 20 meters only this trip.
Well, I hooked up the radio and laid it on the backpack and got settled in for the pile up I was about to have. I called CQ at 5 watts CW for at least 15 minutes solid without a single hit… at all. Then just as I was about to give up thinking the bands were closed, I get a call from KA3ICJ in North Dakota of all places!!! Still thinking it was the antenna as the signal report was 339 for my signal and he was much louder than that, so I shut down the rig and replace the 30’ wire with the 65’ wire and then use the 30’ for the counter poise. I gave in and turned the radio up to 10 watts too as I wanted to get this activation in so I could go shoot photos too. I noticed a large difference in the band noise this time, tuned up and started calling CQ again. Things were different this time. I started getting called from basically everywhere it seemed, New Jersey to New Mexico then Oklahoma to New Hampshire were all in the log now and in less than 20 minutes of using the longer antenna, I had the activation! With the 10th contact being TI5JON from Costa Rica!!! (He was actually closer than K7LVJ as it turns out who was 3361 kilometers away… lol)
Not long after I got a Canadian VA2YZX who was coming in quite strong. What is neat is that I can look at the logbook and see the band fading in and out from the signal reports. Just take a look at the page and see what I mean. When I hit an hour from when I made the first QSO to the last one, I went QRT and packed up the gear, by this time though, it was time to go meet Teresa (KG4WHE) for Pad Thai…
What are the things I learned from this day?
Things take longer than you think. I left way later than I thought I needed to, not accounting for factors like traffic and stopping for supplies added to my time delay.
Scouting is a good idea before committing to an activation with wanton disregard. Had I done this, I would have known a wire antenna is almost impossible to hang at this location.
Bigger antennas work better, sounds silly but it worked in this instance.
Don’t give up just because your first idea doesn’t work.
Don’t get yourself down if you don’t accomplish everything you wanted to do in a day, it will be alright.
HAVE FUN
As a side note, when I changed from the 30’ to the 65’ wire the tree I was using was too close to make the wire a sloper so I just ran it over the limb (about 25’ up) and back down to about 8’ above grade to a sapling which I tied the rope to. The Antenna was lined up with 32 degrees NE today. See the map below where I overlaid the compass roughly to see what the antenna was doing. This made the wire into an inverted V style random wire of sorts. It seemed to propagate in basically all directions really well for some reason. I need to look into this more. It worked really well.
Thats it for now, 73 and get out there!
de WK4DS