This is my home park.  I have officially decided to get the repeater offender award.  This activation was made with my vertical. 

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For this activation I was attempting to find Shocco Creek State Game Land but I ran across this one and decided to recover the day and activate it for the second time. See my article.     
You really have to be careful picking your spot not a wide road.  I found a spot that I was able to pull over and erect my Chameleon vertical. I made 13 contacts and decided to stop. When I looked at my numbers when I got home I saw that was the same number of contacts I made on my first activation here.

The video I made on searching for the other site is  Here.

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In preparation for getting ready for a group event I decided to go there by myself first. Here is a video I made for our then upcoming “Get on the air POTA Event”

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When my friend Ryan AVERY (NC4RA) indicated he was going to activate his first park, I asked him to include me if he wanted company and he did. He also had invited Shep Sheppard (K4OKI) to join us.  He decided to activate K-6909 Harris State Game Land early Sunday Morning.  It was a little early for me (8:00 AM)  but I arrived first.  As we were setting up the ranger came by and indicated the shelter is reserved but we were welcomed to stay until that afternoon.  It just so happened I knew her from my astronomy club activities. Ryan was able to set up his QRP radio to make digital QRP FT8 contacts but when it came to SSB was not able to make contacts using the Wolf River vertical antenna. I decided to set up and try  my Chameleon Portable HF Antenna CHA HYBRID Micro.  We were successful and made park to park as well as hunters.  We did have thunderstorms in the area that may have affected our signal. We had a total of 57 contacts and a great day for POTA Activations.

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I am not making any statements. The Contacts were made from a park in Middlesex, NC. The Endfed is a MFJ-1984MP. Chameleon Portable HF Antenna CHA HYBRID Micro

Vertical Contacts 

 

Ended Contacts 

 

Great weather for activating the park today.  I started off with a good breakfast and started my first workout at the gym I joined.  I hope by taking better care of myself I will have more energy to activate parks. Hanging up my Endfed antenna took a little longer than what I wanted (45 minutes) due to the wire getting tangled and the string getting tangled but when I finished I had good swr for a change unlike what happened at my last activation. I suppose my set up time will be reduced with practice like they way it is with my vertical.  I did have a visitor stop by. Jason the carpenter was curious about what we were doing out here. Several of us have been activating the park.   I told him we are amateur radio operators and we were talking to people all over the world.  I told him about how to get licensed and had him take a picture of my ocr code for the website. This was maybe my second time with the Endfed at an activation.    
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For my first attempt at this park see K-3867 Swift Creek Bluffs State Nature Preserve

I had tried to activate this park before but when I got passed #8 my battery went dead. No fault of my battery.  I hadn’t charged it in the last six activations.  Lesson learned.  I am gaining more confidence in the set up of the Chameleon Portable HF Antenna CHA HYBRID Micro.  This park has a small lot for parking so I backed up the car to the far corner.

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Thanks for reading. De  n4mqu 

 

 

 

 

I need to step up my game and activate more North Carolina parks quicker.  At this rate it will take me four years to activate the parks.  Today’s activation was a success.  I was able to activate the park without getting my car damaged.  I was pretty good navigating out of my spot utilizing several 3 point turns.  When I first entered I was going to investigate the game land further but a tree limb was blocking the way.

Using my pneumatic antenna wire launcher I was able to hang my MFJ-1984MP  but after getting one contact on 20 and trying more I decided to try to tune 40 and had no luck.  I ended up putting up my vertical antenna and completing my activation.  I will need to do more experimenting and see why i have had great success with it in the past but it’s hit and miss now.  Thank you for reading. Be sure to visit my POTA page.

As a result of this activation I received the Silver activator award.

 

As everyone knows that follows me my goal is to activate every park in North Carolina (230).  This is not North Carolina.  This does not prevent me from activating parks in other states as I visit for other reasons. My friend W4JE wanted me to rescue some spare parts from the storage room so we planned to meet at a mutually agreeable location in Virginia.  This time I selected a park. We had met at gas stations, television broadcast stations, etc. but never at a park for activation.  We chose K-0718 Richmond National Battlefield. 

While waiting for Andy to show I started getting everything ready. I guess I cross threaded something in my Chameleon Vertical antenna because I didn’t get it set up before Andy arrived.

Andy being a engineer was able to correct the situation and we were able to complete setting up the station.

Andy made the first contact with W4BWY in North Carolina.  This met my first goal of making at least one contact.  I proceeded to make 11 contacts and someone started giving the preamble to his net without asking if frequency is in use. When they paused I indicated that the frequency was in use. He informed me that they had been using that frequency for 40 years and etc. For everyone’s benefit 14.243 Mhz is a frequency that is owned by a net. (Kidding)  I asked him if I could contact the last station I was working and he agreed so I made the last contact and I relinquished the frequency.  It kind of put a damper on things but I did sweep thru the bands and made a few more contacts.  

As a net control station myself for a net going on since 1938 I have had ongoing qso’s before on net frequency and usually if I asked I haven’t had anyone turn me down on relinquishing the frequency. Maybe that person didn’t hear me and just was following his routine.  For everyone’s reference I copied this from the fcc.gov website.

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Links to prior articles:

1. K-3854 #1 20220919
2. K-3854 #3 20220130
3. K-3854 #4 20220208
4. K-3865 #7 20220521

 

 

I arrived at 9:27 and started operating at 10:08.  I tried to work 6 bands but only worked 4.  40, 15, 17 and 20.