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258 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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258 viewsIt's been a busy week. This Thursday June 12 we gathered at Chickamauga Battlefield US-0716 over on the west side of the park at the 'recreation field' parking lot.
Danny AG4DW set up on the west end at the picnic tables. Jody W4LWC assisted him with logging duties. Danny made 91 total contacts. 74 SSB contacts and 7 FT8 contacts on 20 meters, then went to 15 meters FT8 and made 10 more including one DX to Spain. Allen KN4FKS set up on the east end of the parking lot under the shade trees. He had 29 SSB contacts, 26 on 40 meters and 3 on 20 meters with a total of 9 Park to Park contacts. Max N4NWD completed his first activation the hard way. He used his ICOM-705 QRP rig and was using 5 watts. He made 1 SSB contact on 40 meters and 9 on 20 meters for a successful POTA activation. Welcome to the 'dark side' Max. POTA has now claimed a new believer. John KB4QXI set up around the corner at the Wilder tower parking lot to avoid the heavy RF with us. He ran SSB on 20 meters for ?? contacts. We even got a Park to Park with him.
Dan K2DTS came by and we fixed his 'leak' He moved over across the park to activate for a bit before leaving to have lunch with his wife. He had ?? contacts on the day. Ed KM6UTC set up on the Battlefield as well but he was at the Cravens House site. He had 70 total FT8 contacts 6 DX contacts to the East. The the magic band opened up and he had 4 contacts on 6 meters.
Three of us were able to make a special POTA Park to Park contact today. Dom NC4XL was activating and passed the 200,000 POTA contacts milestone. He started this personal quest in April of 2021 and in 836 activations is now passing the 200K contact mark. An amazing ride and an amazing old man. You can see his YouTube video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZurxQY6oQvs (just for contrast I started POTA a year before Dom and I have 247 activations with 12,471 contacts)
Earlier in the week several folks were POTA active as well. Allen KN4FKS activated Cloudland Canyon SP US-2169 from the Ascalon Trail Head site on Saturday June 7. He made 50 SSB contacts with 26 Park to Park contacts. John KB4QXI was a bit further afield over near Helen GA where he activated Hartman Farm State Historic Park US-3718 on Friday June 6 and made 24 SSB contacts with 8 P2P contacts. Then on Saturday he activated Unicoi SP US-2204 with 11 SSB contacts with 6 P2P contacts.
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258 viewsWe activated Johns Mountain WMA US-3758 on Wednesday July 9 2025 from the overlook site. It was hot but there was as usual a breeze to make it barrable.
Allen KN4FKS set his usual end fed wire antenna and worked 40 meters SSB. He had 77 contacts with 6 park to park contacts and just 1 Canadian contact. John KB4QXI had 59 contacts with 18 P2P's on 20 meters SSB using his rooftop ham stick. Danny AG4DW set his 'POTA Performer' vertical and worked 17 meters with 8 SSB contacts and 62 FT8 contacts. He had several DX contacts 1 to Spain, 2 to the Dominican Republic and 4 to Canada.
The handy thing about operating from the overlook is that you can keep an eye on the developing weather to the west. When we arrived there was not a cloud in the sky. Then a line of small puffy clouds developed over the far ridgeline. Then as the morning moved into afternoon the clouds got bigger and then darker. About 1:30 we noticed a few far off static crashes. My shade moved and I was about to be in full sun. Enough fun, time to pack up and call it a day. We all got packed up and off the mountain then ran into heavy rains on the way home. Excellent timing. Fun day.
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258 views
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258 views
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