POTA

I drove to the BLM Lower Potomac Field Station to try and make sure that it was going to be allowed for me to setup for a POTA activation in the “park” but unfortunatly the station was closed when I arrived. With this in mind I looked on the map and found a nice area called “Hidden Pond”, driving there I managed to see a couple of deer on the road (and eventually they moved to the side of the road, a blessing and a curse of an EV making little to no noise, they didnt seem to be too interested at all!). I arrived and took the trail. About 1KM from the trailhead there were a number of benches in the shade which were perfect for me to setup on. Setup was again about 15 minutes. The bands were not favourable at all. I had a few contacts, but oddly was getting peaks of noise aproximatly S9 when the sun was not behind clouds. However, I still managed to make a number of contacts during this. Today I also used DF3CB’s FLE for logging which again worked well for my self, with this I think being my prefered method of loging for POTA. Converting logs for upload was as simple as saving the file as an ADIF and uploading. I’ve also updated my scripts that generate the file used to draw the map at the bottom of this post, and insert the table at the end of the post, to also use this ADIF, so I have a much simpler log processing process.

The drive to the visitors centre was great, really nice to know that this is here so close to DC, and central Maryland. As per the POTA directions I checked in with the staff, who directed me towards the far end of the carpark and suggested that would be the best place to activate from. Very freindly staff! I didnt realise until later, that there were some park benches near where I parked, and because of this I ended up operating from the trunk of my car, which was not the most comfy! This time I atempted to use HAMRS again for logging, but it appears to like to go to the end of the input box if you replace a character or two, which is a bit unintuitive. This ended up with me making a fair few mistakes on the logging side. Setting up, took about 10 minutes this time. As the weather was quite warm and I was in the boot^WTrunk I enabled my car’s “camp mode”. Whilst the blast of AC’ed air was a welcome relief, it unfortuantly caused a large amount of QRM. I’m not sure if it’s the car’s inverter or the AC, I suspect the former. What went well #The staff at the wildlife refuge were extremley freindly and very welcoming of POTA activators. When went badly #Logging using HAMRS was, for me, a excersise in frustration. I see why people like the application, as there are some really nice features, however some of the “helping” features end up with some odd things happening.

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.