by William Eric McFadden
From the Daniel Boone National Forest website:
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The Daniel Boone National Forest embraces some of the most rugged terrain west of the Appalachian Mountains. Steep forested slopes, sandstone cliffs and narrow ravines await!
Spread across 21 counties of eastern Kentucky, the Daniel Boone National Forest manages more than 708,000 acres of national forest system lands within a 2.1 million-acre proclamation boundary. From over 600 miles of trails to two federally recognized wildernesses and more than 250 recreation sites, the Daniel Boone National Forest provides countless opportunities to explore eastern Kentucky's landscape, heritage, and culture.
Pictures
Description
On Sunday, June 25, 2023, one member of the Southeast Ohio Radio Adventure Team performed a successful activation of Daniel Boone National Forest (K-4484) in Kentucky as part of the Parks on the Air (POTA; link) program while participating in ARRL Field Day.
Eric McFadden, WD8RIF; his wife Vickie; and their two small dogs had spent Friday and Saturday nights at Carter Caves State Resort Park. While there, Eric had made thirty-seven Field Day QSOs in class "1B KY" and had performed a POTA activation of Tygart State Forest (link) and two POTA activations of Carter Caves State Park (link). On Sunday morning, while continuing their drive to Lexington for the annual McFadden Family Reunion, they made a stop at the Cave Run Lake area within Daniel Boone National Forest so Eric could perform a final Field Day 2023 operation and a POTA activation of Daniel Boone National Forest.
The two humans and two dogs arrived at the Cave Run Lake area of Daniel Boone National Forest at about 1345 UTC, ahead of approaching severe weather. Initially, Eric tried to bungee his Jackite 31' telescoping fiberglass mast to an available bench, but this failed utterly, so Eric fell to his back-up plan of supporting the Jackite on his drive-on base. Deploying his 28½' wire vertical on the 31' Jackite, setting up his KX3 on a folding camp-chair, and setting up his logging PC on a second folding camp-chair, Eric was on the air just prior to 1400 UTC.
Cave Run Lake as viewed from the dam
Cave Run Lake Spillwater as viewed from the dam
A quick spin of the VFO through the 20m band quickly confirmed that 20m was in much better shape
than it had been 24-hours previously. Eric operated in hunt-and-pounce mode, calling the stronger stations
running frequencies, and his first QSO came at 1404 UTC with W2VL, 6A NLI. Working his way up the band,
one twitch of the VFO knob at a time, Eric successfully worked each station that he called—often on
his first call—and had logged a total of thirteen QSOs in thirteen minutes before the threat of the
approaching storm convinced him it was time to tear down and continue their drive west. The excellent
propagation offered on the 20m band gave Eric QSOs with stations located as close as WPA (western PA)
and IL (Illinois), and as far away as SDG (San Diego) and ORG (Orange County) in California, and he
worked stations located on the east coast and in the middle on the country, too.
Freq Md Date Time MyCall Exch Call Exch Pt 14011 CW 2023-06-25 1404 WD8RIF 1B KY W2VL 6A NLI 2 14012 CW 2023-06-25 1405 WD8RIF 1B KY W2YRC 4A ENY 2 14015 CW 2023-06-25 1406 WD8RIF 1B KY N2TM 1D NNJ 2 14018 CW 2023-06-25 1407 WD8RIF 1B KY K0AJW 1A ND 2 14020 CW 2023-06-25 1409 WD8RIF 1B KY K9SS 3A IL 2 14022 CW 2023-06-25 1410 WD8RIF 1B KY K4FC 5A NFL 2 14022 CW 2023-06-25 1411 WD8RIF 1B KY N9RV 1D MT 2 14023 CW 2023-06-25 1412 WD8RIF 1B KY K3WU 1E EPA 2 14025 CW 2023-06-25 1413 WD8RIF 1B KY W6A 2F SDG 2 14026 CW 2023-06-25 1413 WD8RIF 1B KY W6ZE 5A ORG 2 14028 CW 2023-06-25 1414 WD8RIF 1B KY AB3CX 1B WNY 2 14028 CW 2023-06-25 1416 WD8RIF 1B KY N6RK 1E SV 2 14029 CW 2023-06-25 1416 WD8RIF 1B KY K7KC 3F UT 2
All of Eric's QSOs at Daniel Boone National Forest were CW and were made at five watts output.
Combined with the operations at Carter Caves State Park, Eric's Field Day QSO count became fifty QSOs in about 2¼ hours of on-air time.
Eric also submitted his log to the World Wide Flora and Fauna in Amateur Radio (WWFF; link) program for his operation at Daniel Boone National Forest, KFF-4511.
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