I went to one of my 3 parks in Richmond County US-8010 McKinney Lake State Fish Hatchery. It was my 53rd activation. I wasn’t able to use the Chameleon Antenna the LDG 200 was not able to tune it. I had a back up plan with two other dipoles and a newly rebuilt endfed. I ended up using the endfed and was able to work multiple bands without a tuner. One thing I had a problem with a tuner is the turner trues to tune when I key up. Not sure why. I did the activation without the tuner.
Here is a video of me setting up the vertical for testing.
Here are the detailed statistics and breakdown for your 53rd Parks on the Air (POTA) activation at McKinney Lake State Fish Hatchery (US-8010) on October 24, 2026:
Activation Overview
- Total QSOs: 24
- Date: October 24, 2026
- Logging Software: Ham2K Portable Logger v26.10.0
- My Station / Gridsquare: N4MQU / FM04cw (North Carolina)
Mode & Band Breakdown
| Mode | Band | QSO Count | Frequency Range |
| SSB (Voice) | 40m | 13 | ~7.178 MHz – 7.283 MHz |
| SSB (Voice) | 20m | 5 | ~14.243 MHz – 14.324 MHz |
| CW (Morse Code) | 40m | 5 | ~7.047 MHz – 7.060 MHz |
| CW (Morse Code) | 20m | 1 | 14.051 MHz |
| Total | 24 |
Contact Highlights & Notable Logs
- First Contact (UTC): AC1RH on 40m SSB at 13:32:20 UTC (operating from US-11607).
- Double / Triple Log Entries:
- AC1RH worked you on both 40m and 20m.
- WN4AT worked you on both 40m CW and 20m CW.
- Multi-Park Activations / Hunters: Several logging entries included park-to-park (P2P) references, such as KB3WAV logging multiple overlapping POTA units (US-0667, US-0654, US-4567, US-4581, US-9901).
- Geographic Spread: Contacts spanned across multiple states and call areas, including MA, SD, AL, NY, MI, MS, TX, MD, OH, VA, WV, NC, NJ, GA, and WV.