by William Eric McFadden
From the Kincaid Lake State Park website:
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Have an adventure! Explore the lake in a pedal or motor boat rental from the marina. Surrounded by open woodland, the campground offers quiet seclusion with all of the modern conveniences campers expect.
Pictures
- Eric's station inside the car, with Theo- and Ginny-dog
- Eric's mast and antenna
Description
On the afternoon of November 25, 2023, one member of the Southeast Ohio Radio Adventure Team performed a successful activation of Kincaid Lake State Park (K-1261) as part of the Parks on the Air (POTA; link) program.
Eric McFadden, WD8RIF, stopped on the way to Lexington, Kentucky to perform the POTA activation while simultaneously participating in the CQ World Wide DX Contest. Eric was accompanied by his wife Vickie and their two small dogs, Ginny and Theo.
Eric had planned to perform his activation at the park's boat dock parking area but, upon arrival, in addition to finding he had forgotten to pack a vital part of his drive-on antenna base, he found the area, which had showed much promise in the Google satellite-view, to be unsuitable. Eric back-tracked to the park's boat ramp area near the dam. At the otherwise unoccupied boat ramp area, because he could not mount his Jackite 31' telescoping mast on a drive-on base, Eric deployed his 28½' end-fed wire as a sloper to the top of his Goture Red Fox Super Hard 720 carbon-fiber mast held vertical on a spike stuck into the ground. Eric set up his Elecraft KX3 inside the car and was on the air at 1816 UTC.
Eric's KX3 station in his small car, with Theo-dog
looking on and Ginny-dog pretending to be uninterested.
Eric's mast and antenna.
Because this was CQ World Wide DX Contest weekend, Eric had planned to operate only as a hunter, making only contest QSOs. Thus, the fact that Eric didn't have good cell-signal at his location and wouldn't be able to spot himself on the POTA Spots website, or to use POTA Spots to identify possible Park-to-Park (P2P), QSOs wouldn't present a problem. (In fact, Eric later learned he had somehow used up his phone's prepaid-data and the phone was, therefore, useless for POTA Spots or, it turned out, for sat-nav to help Eric find his way to the day's ultimate destination near Lexington, Kentucky.)
Eric began his operation on 20m by tuning up from the bottom of the band and his first QSO came at 1818 UTC with DJ5MW in Germany. Eric had hoped, it being at or very near to the peak of Solar Cycle 25, that band conditions would have been good for a QRP DXer using a compromise antenna to make DX QSOs and, in fact, Eric did manage to work several DX stations but ended up having to work state-side stations, too, in order to validate his POTA activation by making ten QSOs in the limited time he had at the park.
Freq Md Date Time MyCall Exch Call Exch 14006 CW 2023-11-25 1818 WD8RIF 599 4 DJ5MW 599 14 14009 CW 2023-11-25 1819 WD8RIF 599 4 UA2WA 599 15 14020 CW 2023-11-25 1822 WD8RIF 599 4 NC6K 599 03 14024 CW 2023-11-25 1824 WD8RIF 599 4 N4UU 599 05 14024 CW 2023-11-25 1825 WD8RIF 599 4 N1LN 599 05 14026 CW 2023-11-25 1825 WD8RIF 599 4 K4ZW 599 05 14026 CW 2023-11-25 1826 WD8RIF 599 4 VE3EJ 599 04 14031 CW 2023-11-25 1827 WD8RIF 599 4 K1AR 599 05 14031 CW 2023-11-25 1828 WD8RIF 599 4 W4NF 599 05 14033 CW 2023-11-25 1829 WD8RIF 599 4 9A9R 599 15 14036 CW 2023-11-25 1831 WD8RIF 599 4 IR4X 599 15 14048 CW 2023-11-25 1836 WD8RIF 599 4 W2XL 599 05 14058 CW 2023-11-25 1840 WD8RIF 599 4 AD4EB 599 04
Eric finished his operation with thirteen QSOs in just over half an hour of on-air time. All of Eric's QSOs were CW and were made at five watts output.
Eric also submitted his log to the World Wide Flora and Fauna in Amateur Radio (WWFF; link) program for an activation of Kincaid Lake State Park, KFF-1261.
(return)