POTA

I spent most of the weekend of January 25-26 at Morrow Mountain State Park in Stanly County, just east of Charlotte. Saturday morning started with teaching a few chapters of Technician license manual at the RARS Tech class. Once that wrapped, I went home for a quick equipment costume change, picked up John K4EB, and we were off to the state park for the weekend! Our plan was for John to enter Winter Field Day (WFD) and I would enter the CQ World Wide 160m CW contest. When the 160m contest slowed down, I would jump over to Winter Field Day. By the end of the weekend, we would both put the brand new Pinecone Amateur Radio Club on the air in its first contests. All contacts made would also count towards our Parks on the Air totals. ...

I managed to sneak in a Parks on the Air (POTA) activation during a recent Cub Scout camping trip at Falls Lake, K-3841. As part of setting up camp, I threw up a SOTABeams Midi Bandspringer in a tree behind the tent, snaking both aerial and ground wire back in via the rear tent door for later use. After a long day of activities and eating, we settled down in the tent around 9:30pm and the youngest was out by 10pm. Sensing that opportunity was near, I waited a few minutes to ensure he was out-out, then starting wiring together the station. This was the first trip out for my new BioEnno 15Ah battery. After spending a few minutes tuning using my EMTech ZM-2, I checked my work with an analyzer and found that I had a 1.22 SWR on 7.070. Good enough. ...