I have another another story for everyone. Don't worry, I promise this is ham radio related, so don't bail out too early! Sometimes it helps to give the background to how we ended up somewhere.
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On Friday night my wife and I watched a program on PBS about the making of the musical Hamilton. If you haven't heard about this musical, look it up, and see it as soon as you can. At the moment it's tough to get get tickets, but they are available. My YL and I were lucky enough to get to see it early on for a couple reasons:
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NPOTAthon 2.0
Don't forget about my upcoming big event! NPOTAthon 2.0 is coming on October 30th!
1 Crazy Ham 12 Parks 1 Day Check it out here! |
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Because of these things, my wife was hovering over the order button as the tickets went on sale when the show moved to Broadway, and I am glad she did! It is hands down the best show I have ever seen! If nothing else, at least get yourself a copy of the sound track so that you can have the same songs running through your head all the time, that are always running through the heads of the people in our house.
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So back to the task at hand - we loved the musical, so we watched the PBS special about it. During the special, there were some references to Valley Forge (which just happens to be a national park...) After having seen that, the YL said "we should go there tomorrow!" As if I needed an excuse to go to NPOTA unit HP46....
It was a rainy, somewhat chilly day, but considering some of the weather Washington and his men had to deal with while they were, I have no right to complain. Our trip started with a stop at the visitor center so we could watch the short video, and grab a map. Future Operator 1 was well dressed for the weather - rain coat and all!
I also made sure to sign the visitor's log while we were there, along with grabbing our map, and snapping this picture of GW himself.
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Once we did the driving tour, and made a couple stops, we decided that the parking lot for Washington's Headquarters would be a great place for me to do my activation. I wasn't on the air long, but in the 30 - 45 minutes or so that I was on the air, I managed 50 contacts - awesome! Since I like to learn things, or at least have a couple takeaway's (although sometimes it's just new questions...) here's the things that jumped out this time around:
- There are a lot more people on the radio on the weekends! Most of my activations end up being weird weekday / random times because I do them during work travel. this was probably the fastest and biggest pileup I ever generated, and it wasn't even a rare park!
- Some people turn into instant weirdo's in a pileup. At one point I started going by the numbers because the pileup was such a zoo. I wasn't surprised that some people called out of order (I usually just ignore those folks - if you can't follow directions, you won't get the contact) but there were 2 this time that were really odd: There was one person, whom I never acknowledged, but who held their entire half of a contact, as though I had answered them (whoever you are, you're not in my log.) Then there was the person that called over and over, with a BIG signal, during the 2's, that wasn't a 2. I finally answered that person but gave them a 0-0 report - I read somewhere that this is the short way of saying "I hear you, but I'm not logging you because you're being a lid." Again, whoever that was - you're not in the log. Lastly, was the "pileup police" who insisted on yelling at everyone else in the pile-up who called out of turn (P.S. that doesn't help! It's like the auditorium full of kids in an elementary school all hushing each other.)
- In spite of the couple bad eggs, Ham radio is awesome! I've done 20-some different parks now, and every time has been a blast! It makes me even more excited for my upcoming NPOTAthon 2.0 - it's less than a week away!
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