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11 viewsThis weekend April 5-6, 2025 saw the 3rd annual Georgia State Parks POTA Contest . The goal here is to have ALL of the Georgia State Parks activated at once in a contest format. Cloudland Canyon State Park US-2169 was activated by Allen KN4FKS and John KB4QXI from Cabin 7. They set up antennas and stations on Friday evening and got ready for the contest start at 8:00 am Saturday morning.
Through the weekend Allen operated exclusively on 20 meters and John stayed on 40 meters. Band pass filters saved the day with such close proximity RF.
Bright and early Saturday both operators were ready at the start. You could not buy a contact on 20 meters! The band was dead. The sun had burped. After calling CQ for 45 minutes Allen suddenly got an answer from Arizona. He said I was the ONLY signal on his band scope. Ouch. Another few minutes and a DX contact to Columbia was made then the calls started to trickle in. It was 2 contacts the first hour, then 7 more the second hour. By the end of the third hour the 20 meter total was 20 QSO's. It slowly got better and when the day was done Allen had a total of 376 contacts. John was having similar difficulty on 40 meters. He had 143 contacts on the day, We shut down the stations at 10 pm. to get some sleep and be ready to go again Sunday morning.
During the day several fellow hams came by. Harry N4VQ stopped in with his K-9 buddy. Danny AG4DW stopped by to provide adult supervision then went across the park and set up his station giving us Park-to-Park contacts. He cranked out 25 contacts and called it a day. Dean KK4EB an old friend of both John and Allen stopped in and set up on the picnic table out in the yard. He operated on 15 meters and made 81 contacts total, 31 DX and one Georgia P2P .
Allen was awakened Sunday morning by a thunderclap at 6:30 AM. Jumping up he quickly detached both stations coax from the antennas. It was raining heavily and the thunder rolled across the ridge top. Not a good beginning to the second day of the contest. Check out time for the cabin was noon so the morning was tough. Between storm fronts Allen got on the air for a few minutes and quickly got 34 contacts before having to shut down again.
Totals for the weekend Allen Had 410 contacts with 69 P2P calls and only one Georgia park contact for a contest score of 413. John had 187 total contacts, 44 P2P contacts and 31 Georgia P2P contacts which adds 155 points to his 187 for a rough score of 342.
To cap off a fun weekend of solar and terrestrial weather, packing up to leave in the rain was fun. Antenna demobilization with occasional thunder was exciting as well as wet. Then moving all the stuff out to the cars it was just as wet. Fun weekend in spite of all the challenges. Now to dry everything out.
Alan W4PLP activated Unicoi State Park. How was your weekend? Anyone else get out to POTA?
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10 viewsOn Saturday, while a few were invited to spend time with the Ramblers, another crew of POTA operators went off to the Cherokee National Forest to activate.
This was made possible by a very cordial invitation by the Cleveland Ham Radio group and coordinated by Larry Wallace KN4JUU. Their club has a repeater at the top of Oswald Dome at an elevation of 3000’.
The drive up took us into the clouds/dense fog, where the taillights of the vehicle ahead were barely visible. My Land Rover has rear end fog lights from the factory I thought I’d never use… well they got turned on for this.
The road itself was not as in a poor condition as some may remember when heading to the Bat Cave . But it most certainly was much longer.
We arrived and set up with a variety of different radios and antennas. From that elevation even some 2m DX was easily possible.
The highlight of the day was lunch being cooked by our own Chef Boy R Jeff N2YYP. He had made up some Deer burgers the day before. Dangerous stuff! So good a person wanted to just keep eating them. Fortunately self control managed to prevail. Jeff I believe has been elected as the ‘official cook/chef’ for future adventures. I should mention there were dogs and sausages for those who didn’t want any Bambi. And also , Jeff brought some of his award winning Chow Chow. Stuff goes good on just about everything imo
Anyway, I digress. Activations went very well. What a wonderful locale to activate. Afterwards the fog had burned off, and the trip back down was simply Gorgeous! Vistas popped as we traveled down that were picture card perfect.
If the Cleveland crew ever offer the opportunity to go to their site again, I’d strongly encourage folk to take them up on it
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10 viewsOn Saturday, while a few were invited to spend time with the Ramblers, another crew of POTA operators went off to the Cherokee National Forest to activate.
This was made possible by a very cordial invitation by the Cleveland Ham Radio group and coordinated by Larry Wallace KN4JUU. Their club has a repeater at the top of Oswald Dome at an elevation of 3000’.
The drive up took us into the clouds/dense fog, where the taillights of the vehicle ahead were barely visible. My Land Rover has rear end fog lights from the factory I thought I’d never use… well they got turned on for this.
The road itself was not as in a poor condition as some may remember when heading to the Bat Cave . But it most certainly was much longer.
We arrived and set up with a variety of different radios and antennas. From that elevation even some 2m DX was easily possible.
The highlight of the day was lunch being cooked by our own Chef Boy R Jeff N2YYP. He had made up some Deer burgers the day before. Dangerous stuff! So good a person wanted to just keep eating them. Fortunately self control managed to prevail. Jeff I believe has been elected as the ‘official cook/chef’ for future adventures. I should mention there were dogs and sausages for those who didn’t want any Bambi. And also , Jeff brought some of his award winning Chow Chow. Stuff goes good on just about everything imo
Anyway, I digress. Activations went very well. What a wonderful locale to activate. Afterwards the fog had burned off, and the trip back down was simply Gorgeous! Vistas popped as we traveled down that were picture card perfect.
If the Cleveland crew ever offer the opportunity to go to their site again, I’d strongly encourage folk to take them up on it
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10 viewsOn Saturday, while a few were invited to spend time with the Ramblers, another crew of POTA operators went off to the Cherokee National Forest to activate.
This was made possible by a very cordial invitation by the Cleveland Ham Radio group and coordinated by Larry Wallace KN4JUU. Their club has a repeater at the top of Oswald Dome at an elevation of 3000’.
The drive up took us into the clouds/dense fog, where the taillights of the vehicle ahead were barely visible. My Land Rover has rear end fog lights from the factory I thought I’d never use… well they got turned on for this.
The road itself was not as in a poor condition as some may remember when heading to the Bat Cave . But it most certainly was much longer.
We arrived and set up with a variety of different radios and antennas. From that elevation even some 2m DX was easily possible.
The highlight of the day was lunch being cooked by our own Chef Boy R Jeff N2YYP. He had made up some Deer burgers the day before. Dangerous stuff! So good a person wanted to just keep eating them. Fortunately self control managed to prevail. Jeff I believe has been elected as the ‘official cook/chef’ for future adventures. I should mention there were dogs and sausages for those who didn’t want any Bambi. And also , Jeff brought some of his award winning Chow Chow. Stuff goes good on just about everything imo
Anyway, I digress. Activations went very well. What a wonderful locale to activate. Afterwards the fog had burned off, and the trip back down was simply Gorgeous! Vistas popped as we traveled down that were picture card perfect.
If the Cleveland crew ever offer the opportunity to go to their site again, I’d strongly encourage folk to take them up on it
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10 viewsFrom deep in the woods we sent out radio waves. This week we activated Pigeon Mountain US-3742 from the Atwood point site. No pile ups for us, band conditions were 'wonky' to say the least.
Danny AG4DW used FT8 digital and made 43 contacts, with DX to Cuba. Spain, and Isle of Man. Tony WA4TW made 21 SSB contacts with 11 P2P and DX to Saint Petersburg Russia and Canada. Allen KN4FKS had 12 SSB contacts with DX to Switzerland and Slovenia. He also contacted the Battleship IOWA NI6BB. in California.
Tony's son Jerrick joined us for part of the morning.
John KB4QXI activated a park in Arizona that day also. Allen and Danny were able to make contact later that day so it was not a P2P but fun anyhow.
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10 viewsWe activated Johns Mountain WMA US-3758 this Thursday from the overlook site on top of the mountain. The breeze kept up so the day didn't get too hot. Allen KN4FKS had 61 SSB contacts on 20 meters, 14 P2P and 6 DX with one P2P to the Dominican Republic and 5 Canadian stations. Ed KM6UTC had 58 digital FT8 contacts with 9 DX contacts and three contacts in a row to Indonesia. John KB4QXI had 11 contacts with 1 P2P. Danny had 16 contacts on 2 meters, 70 cm, 20 Meters and 15 meters. He had a DX SSB contact with Saint Petersburg Russia.
As usual at the overlook we had several visitors. First was the US Forest Service radio service technician checking on their repeater site 100 yards from the parking lot. They had erected a chain link fence around the tower and repeater house to hopefully slow down the copper thieves who steal the grounding wires from the tower legs and the radio equipment. Sad but true. We also had a Pinhoti Trail long distance hiker stop by and we helped him resupply his water bottles. ( He's in the background of one of the photos.) As we were getting ready to leave and elderly gentleman drove up and he was actually a HAM operator from the Villanow area. I didn't get his call sign but we had a nice chat.
Then even the drive home was eventful. Danny's truck kept overheating and he had to stop and cool down several times to limp home. Probably a water pump issue. Allen got within a mile of home and Winston just sputtered and quit running. It wasn't the heat it simply is not getting spark for some reason. Karen came and towed Winston home. Sort that out later when it cools off a bit. I hope Ed and John made it home without incident there seems to be a trend starting here. I hope not.
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10 viewsWe activated Pigeon Mountain US 3742 this Thursday at the South Brow Road site. There was abundant shade and a cooling breeze all day so it was a wise choice for a hot summer day.
Jeff N2YYP set up his rig way down an old roadbed away from the parking area. Something about sausages and gas. He made 41 SSB contacts on 20 meters with 7 P2P and 6 DX contacts.
Allen KN4FKS worked 15 meters SSB and made 33 contacts 4 P2P and 6 DX. Germany, Hungary, Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico and 2 Canadians.
Ed KM6UTC worked FT8 on 10 and 20 meters with 89 contacts and 12 DX.
John KB4QXI worked 40 meters SSB off his hamstick and made 12 contacts with 3 P2P.
Peter had tweaked his back so he didn't brave the pothole filled road but made the trip up to Grundy Forest Natural Area in Tracy City where he used CW to make 8 QRP contacts and 11 non QRP contacts for a total of 19 contacts.
A fun day was had by all.
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10 viewsWe had a two site activation on this past Thursday.
In the Morning several folks activated Pigeon Mountain US 37-42 from the Estelle mine road site. Then later another group activated Johns Mountain US-3758 from the overlook site. At the Estelle site Tony WA4TW set up his elevated delta loop antenna and had quite a morning working DX with 17 total contacts with 11 Park to Park contacts. His DX was Ukraine, Norway, Israel, Belarus, and Alaska. Dave KQ4GLQ also worked 10 meters but I don't know his contacts nor did Jeff N2YYP report in his totals.
In the afternoon we activated from the Johns Mtn Overlook. Peter KX4BE set up his absolutely tiny QRP rig. He operated CW and made 11 contacts total with 10 being CW and one SSB . See the photos of this micro rig. He packs it easily into his box on the back of his motorcycle. Allen KN4FKS made 31 SSB contacts with 11 P2P and 3 DX to Romania, Poland and Canada. Tont WA4TW came over to the overlook and worked the spot page for Allen.
The leaves were beautiful, the weather was wonderful and the bands were in great shape. A fun day.
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10 viewsWe had a fun relaxing activation at the Chickamauga Battlefield US-0716 this Thursday Nov. 14. We started at 1 pm and caught the afternoon POTA hunter crowd.
Danny AG4DW made 28 contacts on 10 meters using his vertical antenna. He had 17 FT8 contacts and 11 SSB with DX to Canada, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Uruguay. Allen KN4FKS used his Chameleon vertical whip with the extender section. He had a total of 38 SSB contacts. 10 on 40 meters, 24 on 20 meters, 1 on 15 meters, and 3 on Ten. Included in those totals were 23 Park to Park contacts with no DX other than Canada.
Tony WA4TW, Matt AF4MH, and Alan W4PLP stopped by to hang out and simply enjoy the day in the park. They helped with checking spots and providing adult supervision for the two operators. My bad I didn't take the first photo of this activation. However I have attached a photo of our latest line throwing gun we will use to get that long wire set in a distant tree.
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