Amateur Radio Station WD8RIF | POTA Activation Kentucky Horse Park

On a cold, wet, and windy November 26, 2023, one member of the Southeast Ohio Radio Adventure Team performed a successful activation of Kentucky Horse Park (K-10173) as part of the Parks on the Air (POTA; link) program.

Following a walking tour of the Kentucky Horse Park (KHP) and the opportunity to meet several horses, Eric McFadden, WD8RIF, performed a POTA activation of the park before beginning his drive back home from the Georgetown, Kentucky area. Eric was accompanied by his wife Vickie and their two small dogs, Ginny and Theo. (The two dogs got to tour the Kentucky Horse Park in a doggie-trailer/stroller, and Theo barked at nearly every horse he saw.) Eric, Vickie,and the dogs were able to complete the walking tour just before the arrival of rain.

KHP Police Officer Billy enjoys a
shampooing in the Mounted Police Barn.

KHP Police Officer Parker with civilian volunteer
Jessica Lyons in the Mounted Police Barn.
Parker is one of three police horses at KHP
who had been adopted as foals from
Last Chance Corral in Athens, Ohio.

A retired champion in the Hall of
Champions. (Unfortunately, Eric neglected
to record this beautiful animal's name.

Beautiful and massive, the
Percheron Gus in the Big Barn.

Colin, a Clydesdale, in the Big Barn,
has his legs and feet shampooed.

A horse-drawn cart in a seasonal display.

Leaving Vickie and the dogs to stay comfortable in the warmth of the KHP visitor center, Eric moved his car to a more remote part of the KHP parking lot and, because he had forgotten to pack a critical component of his drive-on mast base, and just as the wind and rain were starting, he deployed his 28½' end-fed wire on his Jackite 31' telescoping mast strapped to an existing post that seemed tailor-made for this purpose. Setting up his Elecraft KX3 inside the car, Eric was on the air at 1634 UTC.

Because this was CQ World Wide DX Contest weekend, Eric had planned to operate only as a hunter, making only contest QSOs. However, upon finding an S5 noise-floor on both 15 and 20m, Eric decided, instead, to run a frequency on the quiet 30m band for POTA hunters. This was a good decision, it turns out, if one considers that KHP had been a POTA unit for only about a month and was, therefore, still in high demand by POTA hunters.

Eric began his operation on 30m by finding a clear frequency to run, spotting himself to POTA Spots (link), and calling "CQ POTA". Eric's first QSO came immediately at 1634 UTC with N4IUM in Tennessee. QSOs came very quickly, with Eric's twenty-first QSO coming at 1655 UTC with KD4MSR in Georgia. This run included a park-to-park (P2P) QSO with K3RTA at Lums Pond State Park (K-1741) in Delaware and QSOs with operators located in Tennessee, Wisconsin, Kentucky (2), Alabama (3), Virgina (2), New Jersey (2), New York, Nebraska, Indiana, Illinois (2), North Carolina, Ohio, Delaware, Michigan, and Georgia.

Eric finished his operation with twenty-one QSOs in twenty-one minutes of on-air time. All of Eric's QSOs were CW and were made at five watts output.