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.

Thank you for reading.  Follow my POTA activities here