Amateur Radio Station WD8RIF | POTA Activation Apple Grove Fish Hatchery

On Friday, December 13, 2024, two members of the Southeast Ohio Radio Adventure Team performed a successful activation of Apple Grove Fish Hatchery (US-12056) as part of the Parks on the Air (POTA; link) program.

Eric McFadden, WD8RIF, and Miles McFadden, KD8KNC, visited the Apple Grove Fish Hatchery in Gallipolis Ferry, WV, to perform the fifth POTA activation, and the first CW POTA activation, of the recently-added unit on a cold but warming, sunny Friday morning. They were accompanied by little Theo-dog.

Because Eric had been concerned about road conditions they might find at the the second activation of the day, he had asked Miles to drive them in his snow-tire equipped, all-wheel-drive Subaru Impreza, it being less likely to get stuck in snow or mud than Eric's front-wheel-drive, low-ground-clearance Honda Fit. After a drive of about an hour, Eric and Miles arrived at the Apple Grove Fish Hatchery a few minutes before 1500 UTC. After they explored the area, Eric selected what he hoped would be an out-of-the-way area and he and Miles set up the station. Eric had chosen this activation to test his recently-built, WB3GCK-inspired end-fed Zepp counterpoise-less wire antenna (link), and he supported this antenna as a vertical on his Jackite 31' telescoping fiberglass mast on a drive-on base.

Because the temperature was chilly, Eric chose to operate inside Miles's car, and he mounted his Elecraft KX3 in an AK6Q mount (info) to the clever, articulated, multi-purpose mounts Miles had installed on his Subaru's passenger-side dashboard.

The antenna on the drive-on base and the KX3
mounted on the dash; photos by Miles McFadden.

The antenna under test was a speaker-wire end-fed Zepp, with a radiator having an overall length of 29' and a matching-section/feedline length of 14½'. (WB3GCK tested lengths of 25' and 50'; Eric felt the 29' length might be easier to match because it's nowhere near a halfwave on any band of interest.) Once station set-up was complete, Eric first verified that his KX3's internal ATU could find a good match on all the HF bands of interest, and he was pleased to find that his KX3's ATU could, indeed, find reasonable matches in the CW sub-bands on all bands from 80m to 10m, although several of the bands required two attempts to find a good match.

Pleased that the the KX3 could find a match on all the bands, Eric finishing arranging his operating position and was on the air at 1520 UTC.

As he had hoped, Eric had good cell-signal at this location and was able to access POTA Spots to spot himself, if necessary, and to find Park-to-Park (P2P) QSO opportunities.

Eric began his operation on 20m, finding himself a clear frequency to run, calling "CQ POTA", and was auto-spotted on POTA Spots. His first QSO came at 1521 UTC with W1TM in Kansas. The 29' end-fed Zepp must have worked, or perhaps it was because this was the first CW POTA activation of the unit, but QSOs on 20m came very quickly, with Eric's fifty-fourth QSO coming at 1619 UTC with N3DTF in Pennsylvania. This run included a fun QSO with WB9CYY who was testing a new main tuning capacitor in his hot-rod HW-8. (WB9CYY's article about souping up the HW-8 is available on Eric's Heathkit HW-8 page.) This run also included a two-fer P2P QSO with N1BS at Lincoln Woods State Park (US-2878) and Lincoln Woods State Forest (US-5483) in Rhode Island, a QSO with SM0GJN in Sweden and QSOs with operators located in Alabama (2), Arkansas (2), Connectictut (2), Florida (2), Georgia, Illinois (3), Iowa, Kansas (2), Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan (3), Minesota, Missouri, New Hampshire (2), New Jersey (3), New York (4), Oklahoma (2), Ontario (5), Pennsylvania (2), Rhode Island (2), South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas (4), Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin (3).

When activity on 20m died down, Eric found himself a clear frequency to run on 40m, began calling "CQ POTA", and was again auto-spotted to POTA Spots. His first QSO in this run came at 1623 UTC with N8SCO in West Virginia. QSOs came quickly, with Eric's eighth QSO in this run coming at 1634 UTC with K4SP in Virginia. This run included QSOs with operators located in Michigan, Ohio (2), Ontario, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

In all, counting the two-fer P2P as two QSOs, Eric made sixty-three QSOs. All of Eric's QSOs were CW and were made with a transmitter output of five watts.

Miles did not operate but helped with station set-up and tear-down, took care of Theo-dog, and did all of the activation photography.

Eric was pleased with the performance of the 29' end-fed Zepp counterpoise-less antenna, and will continue testing it, but credits his high number of QSOs made during this activation to the fact that this was only the fifth activation of this unit, and was the very first CW activation. Eric had forgotten how much fun a new POTA unit is to activate and was glad he had been able to make time to visit Apple Grove Fish Hatchery.