WWFF Activation Report!
I haven't been out to do any portable operations for some time, primarily because I haven't had to do any work trips for a while. For me, the two things usually coincide. I just had another work trip to do that took me to our New York City office, which meant I also had the opportunity to do another activation! I'll warn you now - this post gets a touch sentimental at the end, but ham radio does that to me...
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Liberty State Park KFF-1623
View from Liberty State Park, a couple days after the attacks in London.
I used my normal bag of tricks when deciding which park to activate on this trip. I've written in the past about my methodology for choosing a park to activate, so if you're into that kind of thing you can read about it here. For some of my recent activations I have stayed inside of state parks, but for this trip I was staying at one of the standard chain hotels and driving in and out of the park in the evenings.
Since I wasn't going to be able to do one of my preferred portable setups, I did a little fiddling with my antennas. I wanted to use something a little more than just the hamsticks that I use while mobile, but I was going to be limited with what I could do because of time and space constraints associated with driving in and out of the park. The solution I ended up going with was to use parts of my Buddipole as a vertical antenna, in the ball mount on my car. I've touched on this before when I wrote about how I love the standards (specifically, the fact that most of our antenna bits use 3/8-24 connectors!) This time, I kept notes when I was fiddling around, in case someone wants to replicate it:
20 Meters: 2 antenna arms, 1 coil, tapped 13 windings down, and 1 of the standard telescoping whip sections (extended just short of 5 full sections)
40 Meters (voice portion of band): 2 antenna arms, 1 coil (not tapped), 1 of the standard telescoping whip sections (extended 4 sections), and 1 additional detail - verticals on cars at this frequency often need some assistance making a match. In my case I have an MFJ-907 unun installed the car (I talked about that here.) I also needed use that on it's "J" setting to match the antenna to the feed-line.
40 Meters (voice portion of band): 2 antenna arms, 1 coil (not tapped), 1 of the standard telescoping whip sections (extended 4 sections), and 1 additional detail - verticals on cars at this frequency often need some assistance making a match. In my case I have an MFJ-907 unun installed the car (I talked about that here.) I also needed use that on it's "J" setting to match the antenna to the feed-line.
So how did the activation go? Awesome! The first evening I made 50 or so contacts, with a couple DX highlights: Portugal, and a Mobile in England.
The second night I made a handful of additional contacts, but I also had an additional DX contact that deserves special attention - ON7NQ. This was my very first DX contact on CW. While that in itself is special, what really struck me when I made it back to my hotel for the evening was this:
For me this was awesome. Not awesome they way we use it in every day language, but awesome in the sense of it's true definition - inspiring great admiration - because I feel like this contact represents the very heart of one of the purposes of ham radio, international goodwill. Here's why:
I'm very new to CW. I've only had my license since 2014, so I didn't have to learn code for my test, but I'm fascinated by it, and wanted to learn it. I'm still a complete noob though, struggling through contacts at 5 wpm. That's what makes this so fantastic. It was obvious to me that Danny took his time, and slowed way down from what he was accustomed too, in order to make this contact with me. He even worked through me sending the "?" character a couple times as I tried to work out his call. After we finally made the contact he even followed up with encouraging words on FaceBook, which was just spectacular.
For me this was awesome. Not awesome they way we use it in every day language, but awesome in the sense of it's true definition - inspiring great admiration - because I feel like this contact represents the very heart of one of the purposes of ham radio, international goodwill. Here's why:
I'm very new to CW. I've only had my license since 2014, so I didn't have to learn code for my test, but I'm fascinated by it, and wanted to learn it. I'm still a complete noob though, struggling through contacts at 5 wpm. That's what makes this so fantastic. It was obvious to me that Danny took his time, and slowed way down from what he was accustomed too, in order to make this contact with me. He even worked through me sending the "?" character a couple times as I tried to work out his call. After we finally made the contact he even followed up with encouraging words on FaceBook, which was just spectacular.
Let's pause for a minute to reflect on this. As a contrast, I was walking the streets of NYC earlier the same day, which is one of the most diverse places in the US. Even in that diversity however, there isn't much goodwill happening. People are in a hurry, they push, they shove, we crammed onto subway cars, and the friendliest thing I heard anyone say was "Get out of my way!" With all the opportunity for interaction face to face, we often miss that chance. But here, on ham radio, someone I don't know, from another culture, who probably speaks a language I don't know much of (Ich spreche ein bischen deutsch, aber es ist nicht so gut...) treated me with patience, kindness and encouragement. Via ham radio, we are participating in international goodwill in a way that exceeds domestic goodwill. I love that I participate in a hobby where this is an every day occurrence! I can't say any more than that, so for now 73!
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