This post is for all the campers, RVers, park-goers, and park Rangers who can't quite figure out what is going on in the park, or at that neighboring camp site. Most of my posts are written for an audience that knows exactly what I'm up to, but with this one I wanted to try and reach out to some new people. (PS - to all my usual readers, stick around - there's a fun little video at the end!)

I wanted to write this post because for every person that has stopped and asked about what I was doing, I have noticed about 3 who looked long and hard out of curiosity but walked on by. So what is it that I do, that generates all the confused looks? This:

The tent is pretty self explanatory - I do all the things in there that one normally does in a tent, plus one extra thing that involves that giant yellow pole (I call it a mast.) That one additional thing is Ham Radio, and the mast (giant yellow pole) is holding up some wire that I use for a portable antenna.

Do people still do that you say? The answer is yes, and lots of them! When you think of Ham Radio you might think of old guys in their basements, with huge equipment and giant towers, making small talk via 2-way radio across the globe, but there is much more to the hobby than that (and we're not all old! Some of us are teenagers, and some of us are dads in our 30's with only the beginnings of a bald spot😱) The easiest way to understand what Ham Radio is, and how extensive it can be, would be by comparing it to something else, so I'll give you two examples:

We might compare it to the hobby of "Hunting" because within the hobby there are people that do archery, people that use rifles, people that are into muzzle-loading, and some that are into trapping.

Additionally, we might also compare it to "Camping" as a hobby, because within camping, some people are into car-camping, some are into RVing, some are into back-country, and some are into over-landing.

If you have any familiarity with the depths that these other hobbies can go to, you also have a basic understanding of what Ham Radio can be. Rather than tell you about all the corners of Ham Radio that obtaining a license opens up for you, I just wanted to introduce you to the one you might come across in State and National Parks, on Mountains, and even on some remote Islands - Portable Operating!

Portable operating is just what it sounds like - we take small (relatively) equipment out with us, and set up. The folks doing the portable set-up are often called activators because we are "activating" or "putting on the air" a park, a mountain summit, an island, or some similar location. Other people who are at home then try to contact those of us who have set up our portable operation so that they can "collect" those parks/islands/mountains as places they have contacted. We usually call these folks "chasers". On any given day you might be either one, or even both at the same time!

To take this a step forward, we have created our own "awards" programs (they're just for fun - mostly😜) and when we do an activation we send our logs (the list of people we contacted) to the group that organizes the programs (there are several.) Our logs get dumped into a database, compared for some basic validation, and then we can get fancy awards, like our name on a website, or a pretty certificate to hang on the wall (remember, it's just for fun and bragging rights!)

The portable operating I do most often is part of an international program called "World Wide Flora and Fauna" which focuses on operating from a specific list of natural spaces. The places on the list for the US devision of the program are mostly state and national parks, so we often refer to it as "Parks on the Air." So the next time you see someone setting up an odd campsite, like you can see me doing in the short video below, stop by and say hi! Most of us love to chat, and if you are curious most of us are even willing to put you on the air so that you can try and make some contacts yourself (we call that 3rd party traffic, and we can help you do that as long as you have us helping as your "control operator".)

If you're at all curious about ham radio, a great place to start is the American Radio Relay League Website.  If you're into any type of outdoor activity, ham radio is an awesome compliment to that.  Not sure how?  Drop me a line and we can chat more!

Did you ever have a project with that one little detail you just didn't get around to? In ham radio, sometimes I think that it is required that you always have at least one unfinished project at any given time!

For me, one of those projects is my Mast-From-Junk (if you want to read about this project from start to current, go back to part 1.) When I made this, I put an end on it that had painters-pole thread, so that I could easily attach things at the top.

While this was a great idea, it went until now before I got anything that could actually be used on this! My intention all along was to make this work with my Buddipole parts, so I finally ordered the adapter they sell to attach their components to this type of thread.

Strange how time can slip away during the busyness of life, and make it take 5 months to get around to ordering a $6 part! Now that I finally have it, my mast feels much more complete, and I have a whole additional range of antenna tricks available to me on my portable operations!

     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!