I won't write too much about my Winter Field Day 2017 activation, other than to say it was blast!  At the end of this post I included a video, so other than a few short comments, I'll let the video do the talking for me.
     For my antenna I used my "Mast-From-Junk" even though I have trees in my backyard, mainly because I wanted to press it into service (but also because my little operator wanted to set up the mast!)  I also used my "quick and dirty feedpoint" at the top of the mast.  I did 2 inverted V antenna's - one for 40 and one for 20, perpendicular to each other, with the single feed-point, and it worked out great!

     The last think I'll blabber about, before I get to the good stuff, is that I used one of these for heat, both last year and this year, and it worked out great!  
​   

     They are awesome for this type of thing because they have a bunch of safety features (auto shut off if they tip over, if it senses low oxygen, etc. etc.) and they work well for "keeping the edge off" when you're in the cold (this year it was pretty warm for January - Mid 30's F during the day, only dropped to the 20's F at night.)   
​     I use the optional extension hose to hook it to a larger propane bottle.  If you do this like I do, be sure to get the filter, since it's hard to know what's in the propane, depending on where you get your bottles filled!  I also keep an extinguisher handy just in case, but this heater has never given any reason to suspect I would ever need it!​

     Okay, so here's what you were all waiting for!  My "Photo Video" of Winter Field Day in my back yard!  

     Thanks for watching, and 73!

     For those of you that live in, or frequent, Florida, you already know this, but for the rest of you out there, Alligator Alley is the nickname that is given to the stretch of Route 75 that runs through the Everglades and Big Cypress Nature Preserve.  So why name a blog post after a highway?  The simple answer is - because I activated it!

      From January 30th - February 2nd, I had to make a work trip to Ft. Myers FL.  When I started doing my standard search for parks nearby to activate, I started coming up with a lot of duds - the parks that were close ended up being a weird mix of places that close at sunset (which doesn't work out well for after-work activations), or places that you need a boat to access!  Since I don't travel with a boat, those were out of the question.  I was about to give up and just stick to activating the Holiday Inn, but instead I reached out the community on the POTA Facebook group and wasn't disappointed!  Bob, KA9JAC, jumped in and said if you're willing to travel about an hour, Big Cypress is open 24 hours.  That's all I needed to hear!

     I packed up my backs (I did a a photo-journal style post a while back to show how I travel with my gear) and headed off to work!  My plane landed pretty late Monday night, so I didn't really have time to operate but I did head out to the location that I had scoped out on Google Maps.  At least that's what I tried to do....apparently I Googled wrong, and ended up somewhere else entirely, but I'm glad I did!  Inside Big Cypress Nature Preserve is also the country's smallest post office (and yes, it is an actual, operating post office!)

     I didn't set up here at all, but for anyone planning a future activation this would be a cool place to set up - it has a decent little parking area, after-hours there's not much traffic so you shouldn't be pestered too much, and it isn't too far off the beaten path.  Just gas up before you start, because the closest gas stations close early in the evening!

     So, Tuesday night, I managed to head to the location I initially planned.  Right on Alligator Alley (Route 75) there are a couple trailhead parking area's and rest stops.  I set up at one of the trailhead parking areas.  This was a decent place to operate, but not the most scenic in the world.  For me it was decent though - I set up my buddipole mast for a center support, and ran my 40 meter wire dipole parallel to the fence along the parking area, and tied the ends off to fence posts.  As far as ham radio goes, it worked well, but a word of caution - bring bug spray!  Right around dusk the swarms come out for a feeding frenzy.  It doesn't last long but it's awful while it lasts!  

     During my first evening I managed 30 or so contacts from this location, on 40 meters.  The highlight the first night was a digital contact with Venezuela!  For the second night I found a much more scenic location in the preserve to operate.  I even had visitors come and check out my antenna!

     In addition to this visitor, one of the other visitors was an actual person - another tourist that stopped by and asked about my set up and what I was doing - he thought it was pretty cool, and even said "That's awesome!" when I told him I was making contacts with the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and Puerto Rico.  We may have a new convert to the hobby!
     The location I chose for the second night was actually just down the road a little bit from the tiny post office.  There is a roadside park called "HP Williams Roadside Park" that has a decent parking area, some benches, a small boardwalk for viewing, and even restroom facilities (but no running water, so no promises on what they might smell like in the heat of the summer!)  
     For night 2 I wised up and set up my station inside the back of the rental car (A jeep compass) and ran the wires through one of the windows, open just enough to let the wires through.  I stuffed the opening with a spare t-shirt for good measure.  I then spent the early evening operating from behind the vehicle with the tailgate up, and then when the swarm started coming I just jumped in and closed the tailgate, and kept operating until the feeding frenzy ended.
     My only disappointment from this activation was that I didn't get into any CW like I had planned.  Cell phone reception at this location was in and out, and I had to pack up and leave so that I could be back into an area with cell coverage before my nightly FaceTime call with my kiddo's at home (this is a tradition when I'm traveling - we do our bedtime stories and everything just like we would if I was home.)  
     With that, I'll wrap it up and leave you with a couple tid-bits, and some pictures:

Till next time!

The big day is here! It even started snowing this morning, just to make it a proper winter field day. My backyard, with the snow falling (hard to see snow in pictures though...) is waiting patiently for a tent and antenna's to be erected.

Setup can't start till later this morning, so until then here's my final checklist:

• ​Get my little helper to Dance class and home again
  
• Fill up the gas can (for the generator)
  
• ​Fill up the propane bottle (for heat!)
  

Hope to hear you on the air!

     First things first - I'd like to thank all of you (you know who you are!) for helping me accumulate 60 contacts over a couple of evenings while operating portable from Grand Haven State Park in Michigan!
​     A few weeks back someone asked me what kinds of things I'd be up to when NPOTA ended (last I checked I ended up in a multi-way tie for 90th out of over 1,400 activators - I'll wear being in the top 100 with a badge of honor!)  Well, even though NPOTA is over now that we're into 2017, I still have to travel for work, and I wanted to keep playing radio while I traveled.  Enter "World Wide Flora and Fauna" or WWFF for short.  For those of you not in the know, this is an international program that is very similar to NPOTA, but it is on-going, kind of like SOTA or IOTA.

     My work was taking me to Grand Rapids, MI so I did my standard "park hunt" to decide where to operate (I wrote about how I pick a place to activate a while back.)  I ended up deciding on Grand Haven State Park (Unit KFF-1499) which sits right on Lake Michigan.  I stayed in what they call the "Modern Lodge" which is really just a ranch style house that sits on the edge of their property:

     This was an awesome place to stay, because it was in the park, it was comfortable, and for goodness sake, you can rent an entire house for the same nightly cost as staying in a chain hotel!  The only catch is that you have to clean up after yourself (vacuum, strip beds, etc.) when you leave.  If I had gone in the summer, I would probably have camped in the park, but because the view of the park's lighthouse sometimes looks like this in the winter:

I decided that staying inside a heated building was just fine by me!  I did get lucky, and the weather was fairly nice.  For antenna's, I used my Buddipole, in various configurations.  On 20 meters I set it up as a V antenna (should I have called the opposite of an inverted V a verted V?) and I also set it up as an elevated vertical using some of my wire as 2 elevated, quarter wave radials.  On 40 meters I used the Buddipole mast and it's feedpoint, but used my wire dipole (I gave some details on that in this post.)  On 80 meters I did a hodgepodge arrangement - on each side I used an antenna arm, a coil, and my 40 meter wire, and I tuned it by adjusting taps on the coils.  My biggest antenna takeaways from this trip:

• Sand gets everywhere
• It's nice to have a portable mast when there arn't trees within the range your coax can reach
• I need more coax in my portable kit so that I can reach further to be able to use "that big tree" that's just out of reach
• Sand gets everywhere
• Frozen ground can be hard to drive stakes etc. into, but it can also help make sand hard enough to actually hammer stakes into
• Sand gets everywhere

     Even though the sand outside was a little messy to work in (did I mention that sand gets everywhere?) when I wasn't fiddling with the antenna, I had a very nice temporary "shack" set up in the back bedroom, complete with a cushioned adirondak chair to lounge in while I operated.

     I operated mostly voice (46 contacts over the 2 evenings when I got to operate) but also did some digital modes (14 contacts).  I had 2 highlights here - My very first THOR contact was the first highlight.  My second highlight was way cooler, even though it wasn't even something that most would consider a success:
     I "almost" had my first ever CW contact thanks to W6LEN!  Whenever I have posted on the book of faces that I was going to be doing an activation, W6LEN always asks "are you doing any CW?" and I have always answered "Maybe, if I get up the nerve - I've been practicing but haven't made any contacts on the air."  Well, this time peer pressure finally got me, and I attempted to make a CW contact on the air.  Once I got past the technical hurdle of figuring out how to send CW with the microphone of my 857d (hint: e-mail me if you want to try this, it's not as intuitive as it seems it should be) I made the call, at a very shaky 5wpm:
W6LEN de N3VEM
....and.....I heard code coming back, nice and slow!!!  I copied W6 and then it got wiped out by someone sending right on top really loud, and much faster than I could copy.  I hope it was a mistake, and not someone being a LID and purposefully interfering with a newbie attempt at CW.....
     Anyway, I made the call again, and this time I copied the W, then the loud interrupter broke in again (seeming less like a mistake now...), and I managed to copy an E and a W in between the interrupting dits and dahs.  At one point I also hear my own call coming back to me, but couldn't copy who was sending it thanks to these kind interruptions (how grand...) - I'm sure it was W6LEN, but I didn't log it because it didn't "feel" right since I couldn't technically be sure, because I didn't copy the whole call sign at any point.

     So, with all that said, I now have a mission before my next trip:  practice copying a bunch, grow some stones, get my hands on a key and officially include CW in my next activation!  I have some bits of metal, and I'm sure some bits of spring in my garage somewhere.  I also know for a fact I have some quarter inch plugs and wire....hmmm...maybe another project and related blog post is in order....

dah dah di di dit     di di di dah dah

     I have written quite a bit in the last year about my NPOTA activations and portable operations.  I get the opportunity to do a decent amount of these because I travel a fair bit for my work.  As we move into 2017, I will continue to operate mobile and portable quite often due to my work travels.  With the impending end of NPOTA I figured that I would just go back to operating from hotel rooms and truck stop parking lots during my travels.  As it turns out though, there is another way I can continue to operate portable and do some award seeking at that same time, that I learned about thanks to an interview I heard on 100 Watts and a Wire (if you don't listen to this podcast, you need to start.  Like now.)  What's this amazing, portable operations, award program I speak of?  WWFF, otherwise known as World Wide Flora and Fauna.
     This program works very similar to NPOTA, but has been going on for years and is quite popular internationally (it wasn't big in the US before now, but W3AAX is hoping to change that!)  Each country has it's own sub-group so there are rewards and scoring both in the US group, and internationally.  The international program is known simply as WWFF and the US sub-program is known as KFF, or in US slang, simply Parks on the Air.

     With that bit of introduction, let me get to the point....My travels for 2017 start up again in the first week of the year, so I will be doing my first "pure" KFF activation almost right away (all my KFF activations prior where combo NPOTA/KFF, as nearly all the National Parks are also KFF sites.)  I thought it might be fun to let you in on how I "plan" my activations.  With that thought - here it goes!

     For me, step 1 is the easiest step, because my work schedule dictates the city I'm going to be traveling to.  The offices I support in my job are basically everything the company has east of the Mississippi (I have a co-worker that covers the west.)  Based on business needs, I just scheduled a 3 day visit with our office in the Hudson Valley.  The office is in the town of Harriman, New York, so step 1 is complete - look out Harriman, here I come!  
​     In 2017 I'll be making roughly 2 trips per month, so I'm making it a personal goal to do 30 activations in 2017 because I think I'll be able to hit 1 or 2 parks on each trip.

     For NPOTA there weren't many parks, so at the beginning of the year I had saved every National Park in the states I travel to as a favorite location in Google Maps (Just in case!)  WWFF includes most National Parks, and many State Parks, Nature Reserves, and other "Green Spaces."  Because of the number of sites, I havn't had time to save them all.  I do still start with Google Maps though, just to look and see where the office is.  After I have that pulled up, I open another browser tab and go to wwff-kff.com and scroll down to the map.  I then zoom into the same area of the country, to see what parks are close:

So, In this case the closest parks, and my potential options are:

• KFF-2137 Schunnemunk Mountain
• KFF-2064 Goose Pond Mountain
• KFF-2081 Iona Island
• KFF-2010 Bear Mountain
• KFF-2069 Harriman
• ​KFF-2144 Sterling Forest

     Something I just recently started, with an activation in Cuyahoga Valley, was to try and find lodging inside of a park.  In 2017 I've made it a personal goal to do as much camping as possible on these work trips, instead of doing the standard hotel chains.  With that being said, many state parks close for camping in the winter, but some do have Lodges, Cottages, Cabins, etc.  Knowing that I'm looking for either a camp site (during warm weather) or some kind of indoor lodging (during cold weather) I browse the websites for the parks that I turned up in Step 2.  In this case, Bear Mountain State Park has some Stone Cottages that, based on the website, look pretty neat, so I'll give it a try!

     So, addmittedly, this is the step I skip most often.  Because I'm traveling for work, it's hard to be able to know exactly when I'll be on the air.  Sometimes I even end up working long hours because I only have a limited time in town, so there are cases where I have planned to operate, but then didnt' get to after all. I have vowed to do better this year, and to make sure I post my plans to the Agenda page on the WWFF web site and also on the Facebook groups for KFF and WWFF.  Even when I fail in doing this though, once I'm up and running a quick blast out on social media, or even a self-spot on the cluster, usually gets things rolling.  Even when I don't have cell signal, I've found that once I finally get a bite or two then the calls start to come in as I start to get spotted, etc.  Based on reviews, cell signal in Bear Mountain can be spotty, so I might be relying on good old fashioned luck to find someone to answer my CQ's during this one.

     This is the part of the planning that stays in flux the longest (often right up until I arrive at, and evaluate the site!)  if I'm not staying in the park for whatever reason, I'll use google maps and the terrain feature to try to pick a good spot in the park to stop my car and operate.  If I had to fly into town and I'm not staying in the park, I'll take along equipment and set up they way I did for my activations at Santa Monica Mountains, the Taft Site, and Mt. Rainier.  If I can find a place in the park to stay, I'll set up the way I did during my trip to Cuyahoga Valley.  Lastly, for 2017, I plan on setting up similar to what I did during Winter Field Day last year (and will do again for Winter Field Day this year) but I'll probably use less batteries...
     There is a LOT of other stuff I could write here, like how to decide what equipment to take, how to pack it, etc. but that's a whole post on it's own.  Oh wait....I wrote that post already....

     At the end of the day, this is what it's all about!  For me this is even more important, because Ham Radio is my leisure time activity when I travel for work.  If I can't be with my family I at least want to have something fun to do, rather than just rot my brain by staring at the TV in some random hotel!

     Okay...so you can definately skip this step if you want, but for me, writing about an experience helps to swish everything around in the brain a little bit, and give me some time to reflect.  Sometimes it's so that I can reconcile some problem I had and brainstorm solutions for next time.  Sometimes I do it because for some reason I can't actaully get on the air, so reading and writing about ham radio is the next best thing.  Most often though, I write about the experience because I had so much fun I just want share it!

     So, now that you know my top secret trip planning method, listen for me on the air from Bear Mountain State Park, unit KFF-2010 on January 3rd and 4th (and maybe 5th, if I wake up early enough to get some operating in before I have to leave...)  I hope to hear you on the air!