I QSL DO U?

     I've had a couple random thoughts on QSL cards today, but first, let's deal with the actual purpose of this post...I just dropped a bunch of QSL cards off at my local post office.  A significant chunk of these were for my recent NPOTAthon, as a way to thank those that contacted me, and they looked like this:

     Or, if you contacted me at a whole bunch of parks like K1RO did, the one coming your way might be a little busier:

     While NPOTAthon was a success for me, it was really only possible because of all those folks that contacted me, so this was my way of saying thanks - after all, postcard stamps are cheap!
     With that in mind, even though postcard stamps are pretty cheap, they can add up pretty fast (not to mention getting things printed in color on card stock...) so I only sent QSL cards to those of you who contacted me at 2 or more parks.  I have some left over, so if you only contacted me at 1 park, and you want a card, just send one of yours my way, and I'll return one in kind. 
​

    I love getting QSL cards.  I know in today's world, people don't send them as often - and I have to assume I'm a bit of an anomaly in the fact that I love sending and receiving them, since I am technically a "millennial" and my age group is supposed to think that actual mail is "old fashioned."  Even so, there is something exciting about opening up the mailbox (or PO box in my case), and finding a letter or card addressed to you.  It's even more exciting when the person has taken the time to include a note (bonus points if it's hand-written!)  It just gives that extra human touch that is often missing in today's mostly electronic world - it makes you feel just a little bit more significant in this huge world of ours when you realize that someone took the time to carefully enter the details of their contact with you into their log, look up your address in a database somewhere, write out a card, and send it your way, at their own expense.
​

A Man Said to the Universe
​BY STEPHEN CRANE
A man said to the universe: 
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

    Maybe the universe is a cold hearted something or other, but Amateur Radio Operators are a thoughtful, helpful, caring, and genuinely friendly bunch (most of them anyway...) - thanks to everyone who is out there on the other end of the ether, kindly waiting with their stack of QSL cards (and SWL cards too - I got my first one of those this week!) to send out to those of us who still get excited by letters in the mail!

     So, my business trip that gave me an excuse to drive a long away and do my NPOTAthon ended on thursday, and I started driving home.  For the trip home I decided to actually take the direct route, so what ended up taking me 22 hours on monday (did I forget to mention that after I finished my last stop I still had a 4 hour drive to my final destination?)  I drove in about 9 hours on Thursday afternoon/evening.  The direct route home did take me past 1 National Park, so I stopped and did a quick activation at friendship hill.  This was another sneak attack type of activation, and from first contact to last was 19 minutes and 29 contacts.  
     Now - to be honest, I spent more than 19 minutes there - I probably called CQ for about 5-10 minutes before the first contact, and I made sure to stop with enough time to snap a couple pictures, and get out of the park before they closed (the grounds at Friendship Hill are dawn to dusk.)

     Now, I do have to say, if you missed me activating the site - don't worry - if you happen to be geographically close enough, and there are some VHF openings, you just might get lucky enough to make a contact with this guy on 2 meter FM simplex......

     Okay, so maybe he didn't actually use an HT to talk his helpers while surveying the land, but I just couldn't help myself.  Check out another view of this picture, and the couple others I snapped before click away to some other corner of the internet:

     73 Everyone!  Oh, and if you're interested, and happen to have an FCC license, you can get your own 18th century communication device (ummm, sure....that's when it's from...) just like the one above from the infamous Amazon:

post contains affiliate links 

     So, as I start typing this, I honestly have no idea where to start.  I don't want to bore everyone with a giant, miles long post (although that would be fitting with my miles long trip...), but I feel like I'm bursting at the seams with NPOTA excitement after my marathon of NPOTA activations.  I think this is going to be the game plan - this post will be a summary post, and maybe later on I'll do a couple follow up posts, as needed.  One I have in mind is a "lessons learned" post for others that want to do a marathon like this, or for others that just want to activate some of the same parks.  

     So, to start, my goal was to activate 12 parks in a single day.  Ambitious, yes. Impossible, not at all!  Thanks to all the chasers out there, I was able to hand out contacts in all 12 parks on my list, but I only had enough contacts at 10 of them to "count."  So even though I didn't quite hit my goal, I still set a new bar - 10 parks in 1 day!  Firstly, here are the parks where I handed out contacts, but didn't get credit.  I uploaded the logs so these chasers would at least get credit for these parks, and I also counted these "points" towards my own scoring (details at the end of this post!):

• Gettysburg National Military Park
• Catoctin Mountain Park

     I think the lesson with Gettysburg was that, while Hams will often stay up late at night playing radio, getting them to wake up early is another story - One of my few contacts at Gettysburg was a west coast ham, that I suspect was actually staying up late, instead of getting up early :-)
     Catoctin Mountain Park was just a bad choice of location on my part.  I would have liked to blame the residents of the park (wait...does someone live there?  I hear they have a camp....) for interfering with my transmissions. In reality though, the spot I stopped, while convenient for my drive, was in a literal hole, and I was blasting all my RF into the dirt....oh well! 

     Anyway, enough of this negative stuff - Here's the good news:

     In no particular order (oh wait, they are in order - the order in which I activated them!) here are the 10 Parks I activated on August 1st, 2016:

• Eisenhower National Historic Site
• Antietam National Battlefield
• Harpers Ferry National Historic Park
• Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historic Park
• Blue Ridge Parkway
• Shenandoah National Park
• Appalachian National Scenic Trail
• Bluestone National Scenic River
• New River Gorge National River
• Gauley River National Recreation Area

     Many of these contacts consisted of getting in and out, and operating from my mobile, but here are some highlights I'd like to point out:

     Eisenhower is a relatively rare unit, because it doesn't have much public access.  It's actually managed by the Gettysburg folks, and visitors have to be bussed in from the Gettysburg lot.  I filled out a special use permit to make sure I'd be good to go, but if you contact me I can fill you in on a sneaky (maybe not-so-sneaky) place you can activate from, where you would be out of the way, and wouldn't draw attention if you just operated from your car :-)

     The next notable activation, was my "twofer" at Shenandoah and Appalachian Trail.  The main reason this one stood out, was because I had to get out of my car.  Trails have some special NPOTA rules - reached under human power, within 100' of the trail, and no part of the station can be connected to the car.  So, the first hurdle, was choosing the location.  Luckily there is pull-off right at the start of Skyline Drive (Shenandoah Park's Scenic Road), that also happens to have the Appalachian Trail going right through the middle of it!  This means that I could jump out of the car, grab my case of stuff, and meet all the requirements with just a few footsteps!

     After this activation, I had my longest "between parks" drive - Luckily I had the most recent episode (Episode 56) of the 100 Watts and a Wire Podcast to keep me company for part of the ride.  They recently started doing news segments from Amateure Radio Newsline (ARN), and it was a blast hearing the story ARN did about my activation, while I was doing my activation!

     The next couple parks were Rivers, which also have an interesting twist - the requirement to be within 100' of the water.  To prove I satisfied that, I traveled with this guy:

     Using this let me get some photographic evidence that I was close enough to the river.  As a note here, let me know if you want to know the GPS locations of these spots I found.  I found them by studying google maps before I went, but it took me quite a while - I'm willing to share so you don't have to do the same thing!  Just be warned that it is a single lane, bumpy, rocky, unpaved, bottom of the car scraping drive to one of them....

     So here's what all the chasers have been waiting for (okay, so maybe not really waiting, but I bet they're at least curious)...who contacted me at the most parks?  Here are some stats - Out of 213 total contacts, I logged 142 different chasers.  The top chasers where:

• K1RO - Mark - 7 parks
• W2NO - Dan - 7 parks
• K2GAV - Theodore - 6 parks
• KG8P - Thomas - 5 parks
• KT1K - Robert - 5 parks
• W1CX - Caid - 5 parks
• W9JA - Richard - 5 parks
• KR0P - John - 4 parks
• K1KA - David - 3 parks
• KC1CBQ - Gary - 3 parks
• KD4ADC - John - 3 parks
• N4CC - Gregory - 3 parks
• WB2QJ - Mark - 3 parks

     Thanks to the chasers listed above, and the 129 others that contacted me that day, I honestly feel like I can say NPOTAthon was a big success!

     As I've been doing my NPOTA activations I've been trying to do as many different parks as possible.  I travel around for work, and when I'm in an area that's close to a park that I've already activated, I try to look for a different one.  This idea is how I ended up at unit NM22, the Roger Williams National Memorial.  
     This was an interesting one because on the NPOTA page it was marked with a single *, which means it is a sensitive unit.  It also had only had 4 activations so far, and it is an "urban" park.  In spite of these things trying to scare me off, I looked on Google Maps and it looked they had their own parking area.  That was all I needed to know, in order to decide to drive by and scope it out.
     When I got there, the actual park visitor center was closed, but the park was bustling with activity - being an urban park there were people walking dogs, jogging and walking through, people sitting at picnic tables, etc.  The parking was also definitely part of the park, as it clearly stated "Parking for Roger William National Memorial Park visitors only."  Well - I was a park visitor (even though I was only visiting from my car...) so I parked!  The signs also said there was a 2 hour limit.  I knew that was plenty of time, so I booted up the laptop, turned on the rig, and made a bunch of people happy chasers, because with only 4 prior activations, this was a first for quite a few folks!
     The icing on the cake was, because I can get internet through the cell network while mobile (usually!), I was able to upload to Logbook of the World before I even pulled out of the lot!  I ended up doing about 80 contacts in under 2 hours, including setup (which really was only plugging headphones into my radio and booting up my computer) and teardown (uploading to LOTW, shutting down the computer, and taking the headphones off.)  
     With how easy it was to do an evening activation of this park for a couple hours from my mobile, I'm not exactly sure why my activation was only the 5th.  If you have a mobile HF, give this one a go.  If you need to set up a station, it might be a different story though...

bye for now!