My local club, the Red Rose Repeater Association, is having an event today!  We are setting up at Welsh Mountain Community Park as a way to play on the radio, participate in the ARRL Rookie Roundup, and generally have some radio fun.  Pull it up on google maps and come join us from 2pm - 8pm, EST.  One of the club members will be monitoring the repeater if you need a talk in:

 Freq: 147.015     offset: +0.6     PL:118.8     Echolink Node: 380019

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     This activation happened when I was on one of my trips for work.  I was starting out at our Cleveland, Ohio office, and then finishing up the trip in our Pittsburg PA office.  Since Cleveland is about a 5 hour drive my home, I drove out there, and then stopped to do this activation on the drive between the two offices.  I stopped for a quick photo op as I entered the park....little did I know what the afternoon was going to bring...

     The area in the park where I decided to set up was at the Wetmore Trailhead.  I picked that location, because based on the maps I could find on the park's web site it seemed like a decent place where I could park my car, set up my Buddiepole beside it, and operate similar to the way I did at Minuteman National Park.  I also thought it was a good spot because based on elevation maps I looked at, it also seemed like this parking area sat at a relatively high area, and it had bathrooms (well, a seat over a hole in the ground, in one of the new style of "composting" toilets that are in a lot of the parks now.)  

     I set up my equipment in my traditional method, except instead of a standard flat dipole I set up my Buddiepole as an inverted V.  No reason in particular - just figured i'd do it that way to see how it played.  

     When I set it up it didn't tune with the same taps on the coils that it normally does, so I assumed that this had to do with the different impedance at the feedpoint because of inverted V format.  I made the adjustments to get decent match (using my RigExpert AA-54 analyzer), I started transmitting and.......nothing.  I called for a looooong time and got no responses.  
     I reached the point where I was going to give up, but figured I'd try a different band first.  When I started to re-tune for the other band I got some weird fluctuations on my analyzer, so I started fiddling with connections, and actually changed out my coax and presto - things started tuning up like normal.  Conditions still weren't great, but at least I started making some contacts!
     All of this led me to what many of you probably already knew.  Cheap coax goes bad fast.  I had grabbed some coax when the Radio Shack stores were going out of business, and this is what I had been using with this antenna.  I now have some decent RG-8X on it's way from DX Engineering, to replace the Radio Shack stuff in my portable kit.  Lesson learned.

What ham radio lessons have you learned the hard way?  Leave a comment and let me know!

     So, I'll officially call that one a "near fail."  I'll post soon with some pictures, things I learned, or thought I learned, etc.  This was probably my toughest activation yet - it took me multiple hours of struggling through noise, weak signals, etc.  just to get to the minimum number of contacts.  At one point I even considered bagging it, BUT I stuck with it, and managed to hit the minimum number of contacts, with a couple extra for insurance.  Logs are uploaded, so now I just cross my fingers and hope that those I contacted confirmed with LOTW, so that this one will "count" for me.
     The good news, it will count for everyone else, because the contacts always count for the chasers, even if the activator doesn't reach the minimum for it to be called a successful activation.

Good Night!

     As you may have seen in my previous posts, after a bunch of uncertainty, I ended up at the William Howard Taft National Historic Site for a National Parks on the Air activation (or as my 4 year old ham in training says - actimation.)

     My activation at this park actually started as a plan to activate a different park, and with only VHF/UHF.  I was going to be doing a two city tour of Ohio for my work.  The week started in Cincinnati and ended in Columbus.  Because I was flying into Cincinnati I first thought I would just take my buddipole antenna kit along as my "personal item" on the plane, and then hook up my HT to it, and do some FM Simplex from a park that was in between the two cities.  After an e-mail exchange with an obviously very confused park superintendent, I decided to just find a different park, and the folks at the William Howard Taft site were very accommodating, even with very short notice.
     As I was planning the trip, I decided to take along my UHF only mobile radio, to see if I could have any luck there, and I was pretty sure it would fit in my carry-on.  That quickly turned into me realizing that if I could take that radio, I could just take my 857d and have a proper HF activation.  I checked the TSA website, and ham radio equipment is specifically listed as "allowed" so I figured I shouldn't have any problems (and I didn't!  They didn't even bat an eye at airport security!)
     With that thought in mind, into the carry-on went my 857d, some power wire, some coax, and my antenna analyzer.  The buddiepole kit was my personal item, so I managed to pack 4 days worth of clothes, and an entire 100 watt HF station, without needing to check a single bag!

     I snaked the power cable, to a picnic table where I set up my operations.  I did have my laptop along, as I always do for work, so I was able to do my computer logging, which is always nice.

     The only thing I didn't have with me that I normally do that I wasn't sure how I'd get around, was my big ground screw that I normally use to anchor/guy my buddipole.  I knew it would be asking too much to get that on an airplane, so I left it at home and figured I'd use the spare tire from the rental to act as a counter-weight for the same purpose.  It dawned on me as I was setting up, that I had something better though!
     As part of my work, I had shipped some equipment ahead of myself to the first office I was at, and then threw it in the car to take with me on the drive to the second office.  This equipment totaled just under 70lbs, and is all in a Pelican case, which turned out to be the perfect anchor!

     Once I was set up and ready to rock and roll, I snapped some additional pictures of my temporary station:

     After the activation, I even took a tour of the home, in which photography was allowed!  I spotted a couple neat things, which included what would have made a very stately shack chair, if W. H. Taft had been a radio operator!

     I had a blast!  My work will keep me bouncing around the northeast for a little bit, as we are in the process of rolling out some new software and doing the trainings for it.  This means that while this was only my third activation, there will be more to come from me in the very near future - keep spinning the big knob, because the next one will be here before you know it!