Amateur Radio Station WD8RIF | POTA Activation Simon Kenton Wildlife Management Area

On Saturday, June 29, 2024, one member of the Southeast Ohio Radio Adventure Team performed a successful activation of Simon Kenton Wildlife Management Area in Kentucky as part of the Parks on the Air (POTA; link) program.

Enroute to Lexington, Kentucky, for the annual McFadden family reunion (always on the last Sunday in June), Eric McFadden, WD8RIF, stopped at Simon Kenton Wildlife Management Area, just outside of Maysville, Kentucky, for a quick activation of this new-to-him POTA unit. He was accompanied by his wife, Vickie, and their two small dogs, Theo and Ginny.

The WMA sign; the rough road to the right
provides the only vehicular access into the
WMA. This is the road that broke Eric's car.

Google Maps on Eric's Android smartphone led the travelers directly to the Simon Kenton Wildlife Management Area sign and the only vehicular access-route into the WME, a track that Google Maps knows nothing about. Eric knew this already, having studied the maps and satellite imagery before the start of this trip, and he was confident he could find his way past the only two intersections he found in the satellite imagery and find his way to the WMA's official parking area at the end of the mile-long gravel track. He hadn't anticipated, however, just how rough the track into the WMA would turn out to be. Fortunately, the roughest portion turned out to be at the very start of the track and, by driving slowly and carefully, Eric and his low-ground-clearance Honda Fit had no trouble climbing the rough, bumpy hill and within ten minutes he and his family had arrived at the parking area with only a few scary-sounding bumps and scrapes under the car along the way.

Because the parking area was a cul-de-sac, and because the road was so rough that there was little chance of other motorists coming to the parking area, Eric felt it would be safe to allow Theo and Ginny roam, so he dressed both dogs in their reflective orange safety vests and left them free to roam. Vickie, having noticed a huge patch of black raspberries near the parking area, went to investigate, with both dogs following her, and Eric began his station set-up.

Eric was pleased to see that he had good cell-signal at the WMA parking area, and that he would be able to spot himself on POTA Spots (link) and to use POTA Spots to identify possible park-to-park (P2P) QSO opportunities.

Eric deployed his Tufteln (link) 35' end-fed random wire (EFRW) antenna as a sloper up to the top of his 31' Jackite telescoping fiberglass mast held upright on a drive-on base, placing three 17' counterpoise wires directly on the ground. Setting his Elecraft KX2 on his camp-chair's flip-up table, Eric was on the air at 1655 UTC.

Immediately upon turning on his KX2, Eric heard KF9D calling "CQ SOTA" on 20m. Eric called him and easily completed the QSO at 1655 UTC. (He did not ask KF9D the name or designator of the summit.)

Switching to 40m and finding a clear frequency to run, Eric began calling "CQ POTA" and was auto-spotted on POTA Spots. His first QSO in this run came at 1658 UTC with W5GDW in North Carolina. Solar conditions had brought poor propagation and, with few exceptions, the signals of the stations calling him were very weak but the noise floor within the WMA was so low that Eric was able to work everyone he could hear. QSOs came steadily, with Eric's 13th QSO in this run coming at 1713 UTC with WA3TVH in Pennsylvania. This run included a P2P QSO with K5KHK who was activating Hamlin Beach State Park (US-2068) in New York and QSOs with operators located in Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania (3), New York (2), Missouri, Ontario, and Michigan. At about 1700 UTC during this run, Eric started noticing thunder and he began to think about what to do if a storm arrived while he was still operating. Then, at 1707 UTC, during the QSO with WB0VPS, Eric was startled to see an American dog tick drop onto the back of his left hand; the nearest trees were 75'-100' away, and nothing else was overhanging the operating location, so where could this have dropped from? (Eric later speculated that it might have fallen from his hat, but then the question became, how did the tick come to be on his hat?)

About the time Eric was finishing his QSO with WA3TVH, Vickie returned from the berry patch and wondered aloud where Ginny was. Realizing that the small, aged, mostly-deaf dog had wandered off, probably deep into the undergrowth, Eric quickly finished his activation and began tearing down his station to protect it if rain should arrive while Vickie began changing her shoes and clothes in order to seach for Ginny. Vickie found Ginny, deep in the undergrowth, only a few minutes later, so Eric was spared the necessity of wading into the vegatation himself to aid in the search.

Arriving back at the car with Ginny, Vickie noticed some ticks on the troublesome little dog, so she and Eric searched the long-haired dog as thoroughly as they could and pulled at least a dozen ticks off of her. (Even after bathing Ginny at the hotel that evening, so that her white hair turned transparent, revealing several more ticks which they removed, Eric and Vickie were pulling ticks off Ginny throughout Sunday and even into Monday morning. They lost count at about twenty ticks removed.) While still at the WMA parking area, Eric and Vickie checked themselves, each other, and Theo for ticks, and finding some and removing them from Vickie and Theo.

After checking his radio bag and his folding camp-chair for ticks, Eric repacked the car and, everyone having had more than enough of the tick-infested Hell that was the WMA parking area, began the drive back along the rough gravel road toward civilization. The drive back on the gravel road went well until the very end, when what had initially been a steep, bumpy ascent was now a steep, bumpy descent, and Eric hit a rock he hadn't seen with enough force he was convinced he had broken his exhaust at or near the exhaust manifold or the flex-joint. The car was noisy but still drivable, so Eric, Vickie, and the dogs continued south and west to Lexington, with several unplanned stops to remove ticks from Ginny and one unplanned stop to remove a tick crawling on the car's headliner.

In all, Eric managed to make fourteen QSOs, with one P2P QSO; all of Eric's QSOs were CW and were made with five watts output. The cost of the activation included what appeared to be a broken exhaust system and three days spent dealing with ticks.

It might go without saying that Eric has no plans to ever revisit Simon Kenton Wildlife Management Area for additional activations.

UPDATE: The good news is that first thing Monday morning, when the travelers were back home and Eric was able to take his car to the local independent exhaust specialist, it was found that the Honda Fit's exhaust system hadn't been damaged at all. The big rock hadn't broken anything; it had just shoved the exhaust pipe above one of the hangers, such that the exhaust pipe rattled against the frame and such that the gasket at the spring-loaded flex-joint was forced open by the forces from the misaligned exhaust system, making the car sound like a demolition-derby car. A strong, quick yank on the exhaust pipe in the proper direction realigned everything and the car was again as quiet as it had been prior to the visit to Simon Kenton Wildlife Management Area.