Well today started out like any other day… hahaha I always wanted to start a story like that…Anyway…
So this day did start out like any other day actually, but it would turn out to be a very different ending. I had a few hours to be able to activate a park and decided to grab my bag and head over to K-2169 for an activation. I had planned on staying a few hours and maybe doing as many bands as I could. When I got to the park they were running an excavator near my usual spot, so I went to the top of the hill where my other good location is and found them mowing the grass with riding lawnmowers!!! ha ha. Figuring that the excavator was quieter than lawnmowers I went back to the first location and started setting up my station. It was at this point that I realized that I might not get an activation today,
You see the pop-up storm clouds had started to roll in and thunder was in the distance. This normally doesn’t happen till later in the afternoon but just for me, the clouds made an exception I guess. I was halfway through setting up the antenna when I started hearing thunder in the far southern edges of the sky. Upon receiving this valuable information I hurriedly finished getting the antenna into the tree with a decent elevation, got my radio out and quickly got on the air.
Once again the Lord was on my side and I had good propagation while I was operating my station. There has been a strong solar storm recently and the bands have been in the trashcan so to speak. Taking a quick look at my log shows the band fading in and out slowly over the hour or so I operated today.
Signal reports as bad as 339 and 229 were common at the beginning. at the end the signal reports were more like 599 & 579 regularly with strong signals coming in from far away states.
Today I used my Icom IC-705 with the automatic tuner and hurriedly assembled the system so I could get the activation as quickly as possible. I had even planned out my escape had the rain started to fall while I was operating. I set up my station so that all I had to do was disconnect the long wire antenna from the tuner and could literally put everything in the backpack (kinda like a bucket of sorts) and just carry it all over to the pavilion to get out of the weather. I had planned, that once the rain had passed, I could go and collect my antenna or hook back up the station and finish the activation should I just need a few more contacts to get my ten.
Turns out, I did not need to worry about any of that, I had 25 QSOs in short order before the storm clouds really got close to me. The clouds were up overhead by the time I had broke down my station, that was not a problem though since I was already packed and ready to head to the truck. All in all it was a good activation even though I was constantly worried about the impending storm rolling in from the south. I guess the moral to the story is don’t give up just because the weatherman said it is going to rain, we all know how accurate they are!! ha ha.
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Thank you and 73
de WK4DS