Expectations and POTA
When I goto a park to activate for POTA, I carry some expectations with me…
I think everyone that activates a park or even sits in front of their base rig with a cup of coffee while dialing around for the hunt carry some expectations about what will happen. If you didn’t expect to find anyone on the air, you wouldn’t bother dialing around on the bands. If you didn’t expect to bust the pileup then you wouldn’t bother to attempt to get through… See my point? All this to say, when I leave the house to activate a park, I expect to secure that activation and then to make many more QSOs while there as well.
Sometimes this is what happens…sometimes is isn’t.
I get over to the park and find that there are a few people there this time. Something I didn’t expect at all…haha. So I move to a different spot and set up the 213” whip and a couple of radials and proceed to tune it up on band and setup the radio next.
Today’s weapon of choice is the sBitx as I had just synced the time wtih the internet so I could do FT8 without issue. (Side note for those that dont know, FT8 requires a close timing sync between the two stations in the QSO, and the easiest way to sync those clocks is to use the internet.) My sBitx has a RTC (Real Time Clock) installed so it will hold usable accuracy for several weeks, but you really need to sync it with the internet about once or twice a month to keep it in time with the other ops. So I hopped on 15 meters as the band was open and I could hear a lot of stations on FT8, So I start trying to work people with zero results. Like none…at all. Then I finally get a reply from Spain! I work him in good order and decide that I just don’t have enough power for long distance stuff today. He sent me a -17dB signal report which is pretty low and this made sense as I was running 6 watts on this day on 15 meters. Not ideal when trying to make lots of contacts and the way my POTA antennas propagate. 15 meters from my POTA activations will normally get me into Europe or Central and South America. It rarely works for anything inside of 500 miles, so that combined with my measly 6 watts of power, and I am sure I was literally down in the noise in Europe…
After spending what felt like hours on 15 meters trying to get just one contact in the log…since I expected to get 10 QSOs in no time… I decided to improve my odds by going to 17 meters and looking around. I know that FT8 on 17 meters is very active so it should be easy to land a few contacts there and maybe even have enough to secure the activation. I can expect that much, surely…
Second things second, (since I did first things first on 15 meters LOL, my Dad jokes are rolling tonight!) I decided to start with CW on 17 meters since I had spent so much time on FT8 with 15 meters. Here I started to have some luck as I worked a few stations with one of them being a German! Nice, things are improving! I had hoped to secure the activation on just the bands above 20 meters and I finally got the 10th QSO in the log while running FT8 on 17 meters! So expectation fulfilled! But then I still had “ole reliable” left to explore yet… 20 meters…
You see, 20 meters is a sure thing for me. If I can’t get the minimum 10 on the other bands then 20 meters will bail me out. I can always get contacts on 20.
To say that 20 meters FT8 was active would be an understatement. Just look at that waterfall, I had to dial back the RF Gain (HF Signals calls it IF) just so it wouldn’t be one solid red blob on the screen! So once again… I expected to get a ton of FT8 QSOs because of all this signal that I was seeing.
As one would expect by now, reality set in and I learned these were stations apparently transmitting with a great deal of power and this is why the whole area was red and not due to the sheer number of stations that were present. You see, it took me 6 minutes to land 3 QSOs into the log, With what appeared to be a bazillion stations on the air. none of them could hear me… or so it would seem. I finally got those three in the log and decided to finish out the activation with some CW on 20 meters to see what I could scare up. Once again, I expected to have a pile up in short order since I was working CW and had right at 15 watts of power to work with…
Once again, I was humbled by the fact that I only worked 3 stations before calling it quits and packing up.
I just wanted to take a minute to talk about this antenna. This is the Wolf River Coils 213” telescoping whip and I think it is intended to be paired with some other parts they make and sell. BUT, they will sell you just the whip if that is all you want. I thought that I would mess around with it some and see how it looked on the nanoVNA and see if it was close to 50 ohm impedance or not and such as that. Well it turns out that it will tune really well as long as you have some radials in play and a little time to either extend or retract the whip till you get the null to land where you want it on the nanoVNA. I am blown away at how well this simple telescoping whip can perform. If you can give it some elevation as well, like I have here, it will really get out there for you. As an example, I easily worked Germany on it with just a few watts earlier. That is how good this antenna can work, so dont discount the humble vertical, it can be a wonderful part of your kit.
Well there you have it, a day of expectations and some very different outcomes from what I had initially expected. haha. See what I mean? Until next time, I hope to work you from a park and put your call in my log!
73
WK4DS