Activating a park in Florida in the Winter
So, I am back in Florida for a couple of weeks…
Today saw me travel out to Chito Branch Reserve for a POTA activation in the afternoon. I have been here before, but it is close to where we are staying so it is a convenient park for me to go to during the time we are here. It is just south east of the town of Brandon and makes for a simple setup as the parking area is inside the park boundary. This is the main reason I like it as it is fast to setup as I have a limited amount of time to activate.
This park is a day use area only and is closed from sundown to sun up every day. So there is technically no way to late shift activate this park if played by the rules. Keep that in mind if you think you will be able to do that sort of activity when you roll up on this park. Technically the parking lot isn’t locked and you can be in it, but the POTA rules state the park has to be open to be eligible. This sign clearly states when the park is open…or rather when it is NOT open…
Once I arrived, I chose a spot under a live oak tree and got to work assembling the station for the day. I had brought me newly acquired Ten Tec Scout 555 with me on this trip to use it some to see how it would run as it arrived. So that is the radio I started out with today. You read that right, I started out with it and then switched over to the one I have had for a while shortly after getting started. More on that later.
I chose to use ham sticks today instead of a wire antenna as I was a little short on time and wanted to try a couple of bands today. The tree limbs were high enough to clear the ham stick so I didn’t worry too much about losing signal to the tree and ran a single radial out to the side to give it a counterpoise. Once the antenna was up and ready, I checked it with the nanoVNA as usual and it looked great.
I then went ahead and stuck the 20 meter ham stick on it and checked that band too so I would know if simply changing the antennas out would be that simple. It was. Both bands looked great so I got in the truck and hooked up the “new-to-me” Scout and got on the air.
As a side note, I can not use the microphone plug cable that I made for the Argonaut 5 on the Scout as it will only key the transmitter, but will not produce a side tone at all… So I have to go through the port on the back of the radio. This radio is so rudimentary that it only has one mode technically, SSB. You see CW is also a SSB signal just with a single tone instead of a complex audio waveform. So this means you can just make the radio for SSB and add a side tone to it with a contact closure and you get CW as well. Pretty ingenious if you ask me.
So they have two connections on the back of the radio for CW, a straight key input that simply keys the transmitter when closed and a paddle input that is connected to a Curtis keyer chip in the radio so you can have automatic keying (without memories) as well.
I use the straight key input since I am using an external keyer. The Hamgadgets keyer has 8 memories divided into two banks so I use this to send CQ and such on POTA. This reduces fatigue and makes time for record keeping and such.
Once setup, I plugged in the 15 meter module and hopped on the air. I dialed around a minute and could hear some stations so I called them to hunt some activators. I have changed my method of Park to Park operations from when I started. Turns out that as long as both activators upload their logs, the P2P credits are automatically done by the website and you do not need to enter their park number at all for them to get Park 2 Park credit. Since that revelation, I have stopped telling people I am at a park at all. This speeds up the QSO and makes it much more fair for the other hunters working the activator as well. I will call and if I can get a QSO I do, if I can’t I move on. Simple as that.
So I worked the two stations you see on the logbook and started to smell what I can only describe as the smell your heat pump makes when you turn on the heat for the first time in the fall. You know the smell—like dust burning off of the coil or whatever it is. I noticed this odor the whole time and kept feeling of the radio to see if it was getting particularly hot somewhere and never noticed anything odd, but then the display faulted out. If there is a problem with the radio the LED display will show up 142.2 and cannot be changed, it did this.
It was at this point that I realized what I had done. Do you remember what I did earlier with the antennas to test them? Yes, the 20 meter antenna was still in play out back and I was on 15 meters with probably a 50:1 SWR— I realized this and stopped operations and switched out the antenna and radio to the other Scout and got back on the air. Figuring that I had just killed my new-to-me radio I reserved myself to just getting the activation and having some fun to get over it.
Well, after making over 30 contacts, I decided to put the other radio back into service to just see what it would do after having time to cool off some. It fired right up! I made a contact or two with it and decided to give my friend Roger (KG4WBI) a call right quick to see if he could hear me in NW Georgia. He did and we had a nice QSO, so he went into the POTA log. After that I texted Aaron (KV9L) and asked him to dial up the frequency to see if he too could hear me all the way up in Indiana. Success! Got him in the log as well albeit, with less signal quality, but still made the trip.
So now I am going to do some inspecting of the 15 meter band module to see if I damaged it before using it again in the future. It is possible that I damaged the low pass filter in the transmitter circuit and it should be corrected before using it again. So we will see.
The parks in Florida are really interesting too, just look at this location in proximity to the road! It is still a fairly RF quiet environment too, except with the occasional noisy car that passes by. Here you can see how I was able to do quick band changes.
I have the two antennas staged on the truck bed cover and I have added QD couplers to them so I don’t have to screw them into the base, but it is a simple push-down and turn process instead. Near instantaneous band changes without having to make special adapters for multiple antennas or some such.
When you do enough park activating, you finally learn to bring all the widgets that make setup simpler and faster. I built the antenna mount and added a large thumb screw for the ground radials so I can install them easily and even if the wires are broken or what ever. QD plugs work great until the wire breaks off at the plug and you cant hook up the radial. I also installed a new BNC connector onto my Wireman coax that I recently broke and got it back in operation today. It was nice to be able to use this coax again.
Below is some of what I am talking about with bringing things to solve problems. The keying line from the Hamgadgets keyer was getting some RF on it and it was making the keyer do odd things due to this stray RF energy. So I made an impromptu RF choke by coiling up a portion of the cable and tying it together with what ever I had handy. Is it super efficient? Nope. But it did work. I should have brought some clamp-on RF chokes with me, but they are at home securely in a bin instead… This did work as I used it again the next day at the same park to get my QSO count up at this park since it doesn’t get activated much anymore and it convenient for me to get to it.
This park allows three types of activities: hiking, biking, and equestrian. These girls showed up for a nice walk with their horses. I asked if I could get a quick photo for my blog, and they were happy to pose. I had not seen proper equipment like they had before, as all the horseback riding in my area is cowboy themed, I guess is the word here. I was impressed with how well the horses behaved and how skilled the girls were at riding.
The next day, I returned for some more CW fun and got on the air with the questionable Scout again to see if it would work properly during an extended session like the one with the other Scout the previous day. I also hopped on 20 meters this time to get some QSOs going on that band as well. I have to say, the hunters did not disappoint. I made many contacts in just a short time. The logbook pages are below. Forty-four contacts, to be exact. That is a phenomenal day in the field by itself. (The count is off because I made a mistake in numbering on the first page.)
I decided to grab the sBitx and see if I could scare up some QSOs on FT8 while I was there. That worked really well too. I was making contacts at about twice the rate as normal for me, and this is a lot more fun than you would think. It is kind of engaging since the sBitx software is not perfect. You have to watch the waterfall for replies, as the software will miss them at times for what appears to be no reason at all. If you click on them quickly enough, the contact will still happen without a hiccup. Otherwise, it adds an extra round to the exchange.
The very next day I was able to return for another round of action and this time I setup on the other side of the parking area and was able to deploy the radial better this time as well. By getting it out like this in the photo, I am able to get good readings on both 15 and 20 meters so I only have to change the antenna itself and there is no fussing with the radial to get it to work. I first got out the suspect Ten Tec Scout again and this time setup on 20 meters with it to see how it would perform. Well i was able to work over 40 contacts in about an hour with it so I think the radio is good to go. Then I put the 15 meter module in it.
As an aside, I dismantled the 15 meter module to inspect it for possible damaged parts but couldn’t find anything wrong with it so I put it back together and put it in the radio. Well the radio worked. somewhat. The keying sounded off like it had RF in the audio chain and there was that clothes dryer smell again…what gives? I decided that now was not the time to try to smoke test these devices so I pulled the 15 meter module and put the Scout away in favor of deploying the sBitx to work some FT8 on 15 meters since the band was open.
You can see from the logbook that I had a pretty good run on FT8 before shutting down the rig so I could pack up and go get Teresa. This is what happy POTA dreams are made of! Look at that logbook! THREE PAGES of contacts! What a day! I really love how easy FT8 is to operate with the sBitx radio. It makes the whole operation pretty smooth with you only needing to change your grid to be good to go. Below you can see the messages that we sent back and fourth and the confirmation that it was logged (the line in white). That is another nice thing about the sBitx, if I get distracted, it will complete the contact and log it internally for me so I don’t lose one to the radio ghosts! I can just pull up the log and get it right away. That is nice.
I am really looking forward to seeing what the dev team comes up with to solve the CW keying problem. It seems like it is a bigger issue that first thought as it is taking a lot longer to solve that everyone figured. So I will wait. I have almost no programming knowledge so I am not in a position to make demands. I will be honest, I could never install another update and this radio would be a wonderful addition to my kit. Farhan, JJ and their team of devs have made a wonderful radio even more awesome already. Shoot, they have even figured out how to add a bunch of digital modes I have never heard of with only a software update to unlock these new features. That is crazy in my book.
The 2 day total of contacts for this park with me is 91! NINETY ONE logged contacts!!! WOW!!! The second day, I got the count off by one on the first page so that number isn’t correct, I caught it when I transcribed the log to the computer to be able to submit it to the POTA site. Thanks for following along and I hope to see you next week!
WK4DS
73
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