by William Eric McFadden
From the wildlife area's website:
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Abundant native game species include the gray squirrel, wild turkey, and white-tailed deer. Lesser numbers of fox squirrel and ruffed grouse are found on the area. Cottontail rabbits occur in small numbers in the reverting fields. All of the furbearers common to southeastern Ohio are found on the area. Approximately 80 species of birds can be seen or heard on the area in a year’s time. Included are cedar waxwing, white-eyed vireo, red-eyed vireo, blue-winged warbler, prairie warbler, yellow warbler, hooded warbler, indigo bunting, Northern mockingbird, wood thrush, Acadian flycatcher, mourning dove, and red-tailed hawk.
Pictures
Description
On Sunday, May 16, 2021, one member of the Southeast Ohio Radio Adventure Team
performed a successful activation of Waterloo Wildlife Area in Ohio as part of the Parks on the
Air (POTA; link) program.
Because of the available cell-signal at this location, Eric McFadden, WD8RIF, chose to go to the same garage/service-area he went to for his previous activation of this park on May 9 (link and he arrived at 1400 UTC. Eric quickly deployed his 28½' wire antenna on his 31' Jackite telescoping fiberglass mast and drive-on base and set up his KX3 inside the car. Eric was on the air at 1414 UTC.
The cell-signal at this location allowed Eric to use the POTA Spots website (link) to spot himself and to look for possible park-to-park (P2P) QSOs.
Eric began operations by looking on POTA Spots for possible P2P QSOs and made a P2P QSO on 40m with KD3D who was activating
Chapman State Park (K-1339) in Pennsylvania and a P2P QSO on 20m with VE2VIA who was activating Parc de la Riviere-du-Moulin
Regional Park (VE-0973) in Quebec, Canada.
Finding his own frequency on 40m, Eric made fourteen QSOs in seventeen minutes.
In all, Eric made sixteen QSOs, including two P2P QSOs, in about twenty-three minutes. All of Eric's QSOs were CW and were made at the 5-watt level.
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