Operating Notes - POTA at Minute Man National Historical Park (US-0745)

Whilst staying in a hotel not too far away, for a trip to the Boston area I decided to try a POTA activation. The Minute Man National Historic Park was only a 10 - 15 minute drive away, and what better than a guy with a British accent trying to activate this park!

Upon arriving I parked up and made a little walk to some picnic tables. As I was setting up, i managed to snap part of the insulator for the Recon 40, it seems to be a 3d printed part, with about 40-50% infill, and looks like it might not have had a good time with the winds at my previous activation attempt. After scratching my head for a bit I ended up just resting the antenna up against a couple of rocks. The placement of the antenna meant i could only get a 3 of the radials out, and only covering about 100 degrees. When I get home I’m going to make a set of radials from my DX10 wire that I have left over from a DX Commander build.

Setting up, took about 20 minutes including the rethinking time.

I setup on the picnic table and started tuning about, and as I was about to check for if the frequency was in use or not, I was able to make a Park To Park with NC4XL which ended up being a 2fer!

After finding a frequency to sit at, I self spotted and started calling CQ. I had a number of stations respond within a short period of time. Unfortuantly one station was just below the noise floor so I could only copy them as a 33, but managed to get them in the log as well, another park to park.

After about 30-40 minutes, the heat unfortuantly was starting to be a problem, with there being an severe weather warning in effect in the area, and due to that I had to go QRT.

What went well #

I managed to get 13 QSOs (14 including the 2fer) just operating 20 meters.

I didn’t melt or otherwise catch on fire when in the heat.

When went badly #

The antenna insulator snapping really was a bad start to the activation. Upon further investigation, the insulator shouldn’t be required if I operate with just the metal, close to the ground, tripod, which also means there shouldnt be any significant tuning of radials required when operating

My 7300 wasn’t consistenly reporting s-units for stations I was copying so my RSTs were a bit “all over the place”

What could be improved #

With the new knowledge of the radials, this should improve the time to deploy, and operating in general.

Logging via paper was again a challenge, paritally as I dont currently have the confidence and skill to be able to quickly copy, but also because my writing is still terrible. Reading the log back at the hotel was a challenge!

I didn’t bring anything to drink, other than a single 500ml bottle of soda, so I should try and make sure I’m bringing something.

QSO Log