Whimsy appears at the end of the article.
The POTA Saga Continues
You meet the nicest people at ham club. And sometimes you pick up useful and interesting information. For example, Ted pointed out that national historic trails count as parks, and that the Parks On The Air (POTA) map marker pins are often not in helpful spots. And Paul pointed out that Fort Bridger is a Wyoming state park at the intersection of four national historic trails, making it a “five-fer”. If I had relied on the online POTA information, I would not have had this next adventure.
So it was that I packed my POTA gear and made the trip to Ft. Bridger. The park exhibits were closed for the season, and the automatic pass dispenser had an “out of order” sign that looked to be years old. But the parking lot was open and empty, so I spread my Faraday cloth on top of my vehicle to provide an RF path to the car body, popped my magnetic base and 18.4’ telescoping antenna on that, tuned up, and was on the air. A station in a sought-after state that offers five parks for one contact does draw a lot of attention and that provided some high speed fun for a while.
Previously, I did a trip to the Bear River State Park at Evanston. That one didn’t exactly go as planned. I popped up the little folding step platform that I use so that I can easily reach the top of the vehicle to spread the Faraday cloth and at that moment I realized that I had neglected to pack my magnetic antenna base. There was no recovery. Still, I got to see spectacular fall colors, filled my tank with cheaper Wyoming fuel, and enjoyed the ride home.
Most recently, Blaine, KC7ZQS, went with me to Fernwood Picnic Area which is just a couple of miles from my home. It was my first outing with my IC705 kit which also uses a small 50 Watt Chinese amplifier. On FT-8 we were driving the amplifier to 25 Watts and on his first CQ POTA Blaine got a mini- pileup going and had some fun working through that. We snagged contacts with Aruba, Dominican Republic, Canada, and multiple US stations. If you have an efficient antenna, 25 watts is enough. The battery, transceiver, and amplifier all conveniently fit on the dash of the vehicle with the tuner and antenna on the roof.
Of course, most POTA activity takes place from home stations as hunters seek activators. But being a POTA activator is a lot of fun and not very difficult to do. Running 25 watts, ¼ of a standard transceiver, the penalty is only 6 dB, one S unit. The reward is much smaller equipment that can be powered for a long time on a small LiFePO4 battery.
Today’s Whimsy
At Bear River, with colors so bright,
He forgot all the parts that were right.
No base, what a shame!
But POTA’s the game,
And the Wyoming drive was a sight.
73 for now,
Denton