Amateur Radio Station WD8RIF | POTA Activation Strouds Run State Park

by William Eric McFadden

From the Strouds Run State Park website:

Several mounds and ancient fortifications were found in this area by early settlers telling us that the Adena Indians once lived here. In more recent history, this was home to the powerful Shawnee Nation until the Treaty of Greenville forced them to abandon their lands in southern Ohio.

The first European settlers arrived in the Athens County region in 1796. Two townships of land in the area had been apportioned by the Ohio Company in 1795 for the benefit of a university. The newly arrived pioneers were encouraged to settle on these college lands so as to make them attractive, productive and to form a fund for the institution.

This venture led to the founding of the town of Athens and Ohio University, the first college in the Northwest Territory. Settlers came by way of flatboats from Marietta down the Ohio and up the Hocking River to an attractive bluff where the town of Athens is now located.

With the discovery of rich coal fields in the area, Athens County soon developed into one of the leading coal producers in the state. The Hocking Canal and railroads provided easy means for shipping coal to distant markets. Clay tile, brick and salt were other industries that brought prosperity to the area.

The park derives its name from the Strouds family who settled in the area in the early 1800s. The land was purchased by the state for forest conservation purposes from 1948 to 1953. The dam creating Dow Lake was completed in 1960. The lake bears the name of C.L. Dow of Ohio University who was instrumental in initiating the project.

Pictures

Eric's KX2 station, with Theo-dog and Ginny-dog

Eric's mast and 35' EFRW antenna

Archer loves Theo-dog

Archer on the fishing pier

Description

On Sunday, February 11, 2024, one member of the Southeast Ohio Radio Adventure Team performed a successful activation of Strouds Run State Park (K-1994) as part of the Parks on the Air (POTA; link) program.

On a cool Sunday afternoon, Eric McFadden, WD8RIF, succeeded in performing a quick POTA activation of Strouds Run State Park, but only after circumstances conspired against success.

Eric had planned to perform his activation while his wife, Vickie, and grandson, Archer, were attending church service. However, after picking up Archer, Eric and Vickie learned that his daughter needed a ride to work for her noon-8pm shift, noon also being the time Vickie's church service would finish. Dropping Vickie and Archer off at church, Eric drove quickly to Strouds Run State Park's Bulldog Shelter and arrived at 10:40am, which left him only fifty minutes to set up, perform his activation, and tear down his station before he'd have to leave to pick up his daughter in time to get her to work. If he hadn't had the two dogs, Theo and Ginny, with him, Eric might have tried to perform the activation but, since the dogs would need to be walked before and probably after his activation, and since his daughter must not be delivered to her workplace late, Eric chose to forgo his activation and, instead, he and the dogs walked the Blackhaw Trail before leaving the park to pick up his daughter.

After dropping off his daughter, Eric went to the church to pick up Vickie and Archer, whereupon Vickie suggested they order pizza and have a picnic lunch at Strouds Run and a POTA activation. Not one to argue with such a suggestion, Eric agreed.

Eric, Vickie, Archer, and the two dogs arrived at Strouds Run State Park's Bulldog shelter about 1830 UTC. After eating their picnic lunch of pizza, and while Vickie occupied Archer, Eric secured the dogs to a picnic table and quickly deployed his Tufteln (link) 35' end-fed random wire (EFRW) antenna, sloping it up to the top of his Goture Red Fox Super Hard 720 carbon-fibermast held upright with a spike, and placed three 17' counterpoise wires directly on the ground. Setting up his Elecraft KX2 on a picnic table in the shelter, Eric was on the air 1856 UTC.

As expected, Eric found he had good cell-signal at this location and he would be able to spot himself on the POTA Spots website (link) and to use POTA Spots to identify possible Park-to-Park (P2P) QSOs.

Beginning his operation on 20m, Eric found himself a clear frequency to run, began calling "CQ POTA", and was, apparently, auto-spotted on POTA Spots. Eric's first QSO came immediately at 1856 UTC with WY1U in Connecticut. QSOs came very quickly—which was a challenge because Archer kept trying to grab Eric's DSLR camera and kept getting tangled in the counterpoise wires, and the dogs kept trying to either get free from the picnic table or to climb onto the bench to be close to Eric—and it was all he could do to copy callsigns and log the QSOs accurately through all the mayhem. In just seventeen minutes, Eric completed sixteen QSOs, and he stopped only because Archer had thrown his boot into Dow Lake just beyond Vickie's reach. This quick run on 20m included a P2P QSO with M0TTQ at Langstone Harbour Conservation Reserve (G-0022) in England and QSOs with operators located in Connecticut, New York (2), New Jersey (2), Vermont, Tennessee, New Brunswick, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Florida (2), Kansas, and Michigan.

In all, Eric made sixteen QSOs in seventeen minutes of operating time. All of Eric's QSOs were CW and were made at five watts output.

After snapping some photos and tearing down his station, Eric, Vickie, Archer, and the dogs hiked a portion of Blackhaw Trail, stopping to spend a few minutes at the fishing pier extending into Dow Lake, before returning to Bulldog Shelter and the car.

Eric also submitted his log to the World Wide Flora and Fauna in Amateur Radio (WWFF; link) program for an operation at Strouds Run State Park, KFF-1994.