Whilst idly checking the POTA Map, I spotted a park which had never been activated. I was a little surprised since it’s in the middle of a town and very easily accessible – with plenty of parking and plenty of space. Whilst there is parking within the park boundary, so it would be possible to activate this park from a vehicle, I decided to go in portable. I grabbed my IC-705 and my MC-750 and headed to the park. I walked around a little until I found a quiet spot to get set up, since the MC-750 isn’t the most subtle antenna I’ve got (but it’s certainly better than my MC-599!) The truth is, the park is pretty huge and there’s lots of places to get set up depending on your preferences, open greens, picnic benches, whatever you like. I eventually got set up at SD 3251 3595.
I like to mix up my modes, bands, and style of operation wherever possible. Since my last POTA was a vehicle based one entirely on 40m SSB, I decided to try a few bands and to use FT8 for this activation. I planned to do 80m, 40m, and 20m – however, I struggled at a couple of points to make contacts. I’m not sure why, but it certainly could have simply been that I was only pushing 5 watts so maybe I was close to the noise for other stations.
I grabbed 4 QSOs on 40m and 6 QSOs on 20m before I decided to close down. I generally like to get a couple extra “for good luck” above the minimum required 10, but since it took me nearly an hour to do this activation and the sun was on its way down – I figured 10 would do, and I shut the station down.
This wasn’t a planned activation, so it was done just using what I had in the car – which just goes to show the benefit of having a small radio “go kit”. Needing a radio go-kit because the apocalypse is here is very unlikely, but being glad you packed it because it allowed for an impromptu POTA activation is definitely possible. Oh – and this is the first park I’ve managed to grab the “First Activator” title for, so that was pretty great too
