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268 views
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268 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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267 viewsPOTA - Pigeon Mtn Wildlife Mgt Area - 4-8-2021, KB4QXI
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267 views5-25-2022, I activated the Dahlonega Gold Museum K-7456. To set up radios I set my vertical antenna in the grass half way between the building and the street. The radio and tuner were placed on a low brick wall and that was my operating position. Got on the air on 20 meters and had a noise floor of S-7 to 8. Made 13 contacts with 1 P2P and 2 DX (Spain, Canada) before I had to go QRT because it was about to rain. With all the passers by and tourist I spent a fair bit of time explaining what I was doing.
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267 viewsWe activated Crockford-Pigeon Mtn. Wildlife Management Area today (1-26-2023) at our Dougherty Gap location. We were hoping the sun would break through the clouds and spread a little warmth. That didn't happen, the wind blew, it was cold and it occasionally spit a little snow.
Allen KN4FKS worked off the Cameleon vertical with the extendable whip and four radials on 20 and 15 meters. Sixty contacts were made with 14 P2P and 3 Canadians. Danny Wooten AG4DW sat in Winston with Allen and handled logging duties keeping everything straight. John KB4QXI used his end fed half wave wire with the end up in a tree and rigged as a sloper with the feed on the ground. He covered 40 meters with 20 contacts and 1 P2P. He kept getting covered up by rag chewers who could not hear him.
Our CW whiz kid, Peter KX4BE used his new 75A Tarheel antenna on the 30, 20, 17, 15, and 12 bands. He had 84 contacts with 10 DX (all on 15m) and 2 P2P.
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267 viewsThursday August 17 we activated Chickamauga National Battlefield K-0716. Tony WA4TW did the talking and Allen KN4FKS kept the log. They recorded 50 contacts with 16 P2P's and 4 Canadians on 20 meters SSB. Danny AG4DW had 21 contacts, 8 SSB on 17 meters and 12 FT8 on 15 meters. Fred KQ4JXX came by and probably was overwhelmed by everything that was said and done. Luckily we did not have to use the line gun to get the antennas up both stations used ground mount verticals. (see the photos for our line gun)Â
A fun day was had by all. It's always great to have a new face and coax them over to the dark side of POTA
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267 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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267 views
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