2020-09-17, 10:59:41
This Parks On The Air program is getting to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. XYL, dog and I spent 3 days in our trailer up at Grundy Lake Provincial Park (85km south of Sudbury, off highway 69) this week. I took my portable kit comprising a Yaesu FT-891, homebrew L-match tuner and my End-Fed-Half-Wave antenna (electrically a half-wave on 80m but physically shortened with a loading coil).
I operated in two sessions, one on Monday afternoon and again on Tuesday afternoon. The objective was to get 10 contacts within the same UTC day (i.e. between 00:00 and 23:59UTC). The fun thing about POTA is that once you get "spotted" you get a pile-up of "hunters". It only takes a couple of CQs, if you are a CW op, to get spotted. The Reverse Beacon Net (RBN) spot is picked by POTA and re-spotted to the POTA site. That didn't seem to work on the first day, but fortunately Grundy Lake Provincial Park is close to the highway so I used my cellphone to self-spot directly to the POTA site.
It was quite cool in the park so I was operating from inside my trailer and putting out 100 watts. The signal reports I received were generally better than my received signal reports. Maybe the FT-891 sensitivity isn't so good, or my antenna (up 30ft in a tree) didn't have good ears. Anyway, I logged enough QSOs each day to qualify for the activation so I was very pleased with that. My log is attached below.
John VA3KOT
I operated in two sessions, one on Monday afternoon and again on Tuesday afternoon. The objective was to get 10 contacts within the same UTC day (i.e. between 00:00 and 23:59UTC). The fun thing about POTA is that once you get "spotted" you get a pile-up of "hunters". It only takes a couple of CQs, if you are a CW op, to get spotted. The Reverse Beacon Net (RBN) spot is picked by POTA and re-spotted to the POTA site. That didn't seem to work on the first day, but fortunately Grundy Lake Provincial Park is close to the highway so I used my cellphone to self-spot directly to the POTA site.
It was quite cool in the park so I was operating from inside my trailer and putting out 100 watts. The signal reports I received were generally better than my received signal reports. Maybe the FT-891 sensitivity isn't so good, or my antenna (up 30ft in a tree) didn't have good ears. Anyway, I logged enough QSOs each day to qualify for the activation so I was very pleased with that. My log is attached below.
John VA3KOT