There was recently a fairly large thread that ran through the National Parks on the Air Facebook Group, because apparently a fellow ham, with more enthusiasm than couth caused problems with one of the Parks that Sean Kutzko, (KX9X - the driving force behind NPOTA at the ARRL) had to clean up.  
     Rather than throw my 2 cents into a rather long thread, that was already starting to go down some ratholes, I figured I'd share my thoughts on planning activations and what I have done, to make sure that my operations would go smoothly, follow the rules, and be fun all around.  

     My NPOTA activations are usually tacked onto work trips, so the planning is challenging, because I can't always plan for exact dates and times of activations.  I do generally know however, that I'll be in the area of a park on a certain date range.  By way of example, I knew that I would be passing very close by the Martin van Buren site on my travels today.

     When I know I am going to be near a park, the first thing I do is visit that park's web-site, and check their hours.  I don't want to be the guy poking around somewhere at a time I shouldn't be.  Luckily, many of the national parks have one set of hours for the actual buildings (visitor center's etc.) which are usually somewhat standard 9-5 type stuff.  They often then have a separate set of hours for their grounds - often times dawn-dusk, or depending on the type of park, 24 hours.
     Once I know the hours, I look at the type of park - if it is a park that is a large recreation area, where people would bring all kinds of equipment by the nature of what is in the park (camping, fishing, boating, photography, etc.) I just go, because I know my little activation with my small equipment won't really be any different than any of these other things going on.  If I see (using Google maps) that the park has large parking areas where I could just operate from my car unnoticed, I pretty much do the same thing.
     However, for parks that are small, if I know ahead of time when I'm going, I just e-mail the superintendent and ask.  So far I've only been told no once - I passed that info along through the proper channels on the ARRL site, and I picked another place to go - that simple!  If the park I'm near is a small one, and I have any doubt, I just don't activate!
     Tonight was a good example though, of a case that wasn't clear.  The hours on the park web site looked to me like they were hours for a visitor center, but looking on Google maps, I could see that there was a lot of ground, and even a trailhead parking lot away from the main buildings.  I figured I'd stop and scope it out.  There were no signs posted at the lot when I pulled up, but there was a sign, that had some map / flyer holders, so I grabbed one, and found what I was looking for:
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     So, according to the flyer, the trail area closes at dusk.  At the time of day I got there, it was after dusk.  There wasn't anyone around, so maybe I would have gotten away with activating anyway, but I didn't - I got back in my car and continued on my journey - sometimes being a good NPOTA activator means you don't activate.  Just learn what you need to learn, and try again another time, or pass along the info to another activator.  In this case, if anyone want to activate this park, there is a nice little trailhead parking area across the road from the visitor center, that would make a perfect place to sit and play radio - just get there before dusk!

     This was another one of my NPOTA activations that was tacked onto a work trip.  There are a couple things about this activation that made it a special one for me, and they aren't specifically related, so I apologize in advance if this post seems like it rambles or gets long - I'll at least do my best to keep it moving in a logical order!   
     The way this story starts, is that I was making a trip to my company's Rochester office. Rather than sit around in the hotel for the evening, or sit around doing work (I love my job, but I still don't want to do it for 100% of my waking hours!), I decided to sneak in an activation.  The Women's Rights National Historic Park was close(ish) to my hotel, so I checked the website, and found that their grounds are open 24 hours - the perfect place to do a late evening activation!

     The first significant thing about this activation was the 2 famous hams I got to contact as part of this activation.  I'll circle back to the first in just a moment, but the second of those two contacts jumped out at me after just a second's hesitation.  When I am doing these activations, I usually log on my laptop, and as I answer the station calling I'm typing their call sign at the same time.  In this case I was saying Kilo Bravo 6 November Uniform you're"  and then I stuttered.  This was because I didn't recognize the call sign until I saw it in writing after I typed it - KB6NU.  Once I realized it, I right away said, into the mic, when I should have been giving a signal report, "I recognize that call sign!  Is this Dan?"  from the other end of the airwaves "Yes it is."  At that point I had to fill him in that I read his blog, and listen to a couple of the podcasts that he regularly appears on....I guess my wife would call it acting like a "Fangirl" but I thought it was cool to make a contact with the guy that writes a blog I read, whose study guides I used for my tech and general exam's (I did them both in one sitting - upgraded to Extra about a year after that) and who I hear on the Ham Radio 360 and ICQ podcasts.

     The other contact that I wanted to mention was something that didn't even dawn on me at the moment, but after I realized it my mind was just blown!  Even thinking about it now as I write this, it's almost emotional.  Here's the story:  As I wrapped up the activation, I saw a message on my post in the NPOTA Facebook group that said "Thanks for the new one!"  Anyone want to guess who that was from?  Okay, I'll tell you.....Kay Craigie!  That's right Madam President!  I know she is not the current president, but for a geeky ham like me, being president of the ARRL is like the being president of United States - once a president, always a president!  When I saw that comment I scrambled to look back at my log, and sure enough, there it was, N3KN, number 1 in the log for this activation!

     This contact leads me to the second significant part of this activation for me.  Think about it!  How awesome is that!  I'm at the National Park that memorializes women's rights, my first contact is with someone who is also getting this park in their log for the first time, so it was a first in both directions AND that person just happens to be someone who was the Female President (first female president I believe!) of an organization that represents a hobby/service that is dominated by men.  How do like them apples?!

     So here's my challenge with this in mind.  Let's make ham radio as inclusive of all groups of people as possible, women included.  Our culture is still ripe with inequalities for women, and while I'm no expert on the subject here are a couple things that jump out at me - the US women's soccer team, that has multiple world cup championships, is paid on average something like 60% (don't quote me on the math here) of the US men's team, which can barely get out of their own way to get through the qualifying rounds.  I also personally feel that our rules for FMLA leave in this country are woefully inadequate, and we still force women to choose between careers, and spending the time with their children that their children really should have, and those in power often shrug it off.  There are even some religious institutions that encourage this behavior with some of their ideas, but in the interest of not going down the religion/politics rathole, because ham radio isn't the place for that, I'll move on.

     In the interest of moving on, I'll end with this:  A big part of National Parks on the Air is about bringing attention to the Park Service, the individual parks, and what they represent.  For me, the activation in this park struck a nerve with something that we discuss in our house regularly, and the serendipitous 1st contact of that activation being with Kay Craigie, N3KN just helped cement the significance of this park in place for me.  After all, "Women's rights are human rights."

,     My work took me up to the Boston area again this past week - I wasn't sure what the timing was going to be like, but I was able to head out to do another park activation!  I've been making it a goal to go to as many different parks as I can, since my work travel's get me all over the northeast.  I hadn't been up to Lowell National Historic Park yet, so that's where I pointed my Ford Fusion.  By the way, for anyone who remembers my car saga - the garage seems to have figured it out - I did the entire round trip from Lancaster to Boston and back again, with no troubles.  Thank goodness! (P.S. the car seems to make less RFI now than it did before the repair, and part of the problem was supposedly electrical issues with the throttle body....related maybe??) 
     I didn't have a lot of time, because Lowell was actually about an hour north of where I was staying.  Thinking back to my attempt at a quick activation before (remember my complete bust at Delaware Water Gap?), I wasn't sure if this was going to be worth the trip or not.  In the end - I'm glad I went!
     My first contact after getting parked was at 6:31pm.  My last contact was at 7:21pm.  I actually called it a night at that point, because part of my routine when I travel is to do a video chat with my little future operators back home and read them their bedtime stories.  I love ham radio, but I love them more!  Anyway, for those doing the math, that's 50 minutes.  I also took a break for about 5 minutes during that, because one of the contacts I made was with ham who was local to the area, so I told him to stop by and say hello.  It was awesome meeting someone in person that I made a contact with, while the radio was still warm from the contact!  All in all, that was about 45 minutes of actual operating time, during which I made 54 contacts!  Thats 1.2 contacts a minutes!  I know the big contesters easily double that, but I've never gone through that many, that fast.  Ever.  Wam, bam,  thank you ham!
     After I packed up and was waiting to start my evening call back home, another local ham that I contacted stopped by, and we talked about how he does his setup at the same park when he activates - there's a nice area at the back of the lot that has a couple trees, spaced just right for his dipole - awesome!
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     So even though this activation was short and unplanned, I consider it a complete success!  It was enough to motivate me to start planning a more challenging activation.  I'll likely have a couple more activation's like this one during the month of July, but for August I'm planning something special.  I'd tell you what it is, but I'm keeping it close to the chest because it's something that I think may be a first/record of some type, at least for NPOTA!  (Remember - I claim to be the first to have done a NPOTA activation using PSK31 while in motion - no one has disputed that yet as far as I know!)  
     Because of the success, I felt I deserved a reward....yum!

With this activation in the bag, I'm now tied with 32 other people for 171st out of 900 activators so far this year - go me!  

​Have a great 4th!

     It's here!  The operating event of the year:

     If you're in the Lancaster area visit our club W3RRR at the Discover Lancaster Center at ​501 Greenfield Rd, Lancaster, PA 17601.  The event officially begins today, the 25th, at 18:00 UTC - that's  2:00pm local time for my non-ham readers - and runs 24 hours straight!

     I'll use this post today to throw up some pictures as we do our thing...check out the gallery below, which I will keep updated throughout the day as much as possible - watch for pictures to start showing up around mid-day:

     Till next time, have fun and be safe!

Are you ready?...........................

     I'll be with my club - W3RRR - at the Discover Lancaster Center:

501 Greenfield Rd
​Lancaster, PA 17601

     Stop by and say hello - tell me that you saw my Club's Field Day location on my blog!  I'd love to meet a reader or two!