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My work got me reasonably close to another National Park recently, and I finished my meetings in time to get in an activation at Saugus Iron Works.
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According to the National Parks on the Air website, my activation will have been the 9th activation at this park. In addition to only 8 prior activations, there have only been 246 contacts with this park. While I didn't add many to that count, I did make enough contacts to earn the activation. Although I didn't have many contacts, I did contact more countries in this activation than I have in any other single activation. In all my previous activations I had contacts in the US, and maybe 1 DX (for the non-ham readers, DX is the abbreviation we use for a contact outside the country.) During this activation I made contact with stations in:
- The United States
- The Czech Republic
- Germany
- Ireland
- Spain
Considering how challenging the day was, I was pleasantly surprised by this little tidbit when I realized it!
the start of the visit
One of the things that I think is awesome about National Parks on the Air, is visiting the parks! I poked around Saugus before I even started playing radio - part of that time was a nice chat with Ranger Mike, who definitely knew his stuff about this park! The short version, is that these iron works started because the Puritan settlers needed iron tools for their work and lives. The Iron Works went through several phases of success and failure (which included some tense interactions between the Puritan settlers and the non-puritan workers, some of which were prisoners of war!) Eventually, the Iron Works was closed, and lost to time. In the 1940's archaeologists began excavations, and in the 50's they rebuilt the Iron Works into the site it is today.
Because most ham radio operators are technology geeks, I'd say every ham in the area needs to check this place out - what's cooler than historical technology!
The middle of the visit
After poking around, I decided to start playing radio! Before I left for the business trip, I had actually thrown some temporary stuff into the car. Part of the semi-secret project that I'm working on (there will be either a series of posts, or one massive post on that project when it is done) involves some of these bits and pieces, so I figured I'd use them on this trip to test them out. This consisted of a pair of big batteries in the trunk (110ah total capacity) and a couple other tidbits.
 
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The other tidbits are a West Mountain Radio Isopwr, which is basically a fancy diode/switch unit that allows these auxiliary batteries to be connected to the main car battery while the car is running, but isolates the batteries when the car isn't running, so that the radio's don't drain the main battery. I also had a West Mountain Radio RigRunner that I used to distribute the DC power.
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It worked out great because I was able to do my activation without the need to sit in a running car! Here's the equipment temporarily thrown in my car - stay tuned for the actual project that this stuff will ultimately be used for.
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Even though the equipment was working out - the contacts weren't coming. It was raining cats and dogs, so I was just using the hamstick that is normally on my car, and even after a couple hours, I had only netted 9 contacts - 1 short of what I needed! When I was getting frustrated to the point of almost giving up, the rain finally let up. I took advantage of the break in the rain to take a short bio break, and set up my buddipole Antenna. I also hooked up my computer to switch over to digital modes.
the end of the visit
If you're curious about my digital setup in my car, check out this post from March when I got myself set up to be able to mobile digital in Shenandoah National Park - this is a temporary arrangement, which will eventually be integrated into the "secret project."
Once I switched over to the buddipole, and digital modes, the contacts flooded in! I made as many PSK31 contacts in the last 30 minutes before the parked closed, as I did in the 2 hours leading up to that! That means I had enough contacts to count, plus some for insurance (I already uploaded my logs!)
I have now successfully activated 5 different parks, and I've had 1 complete failure (Delaware Water Gap.) For those keeping score, this puts me in a tie with a bunch of other people for 160th place out of 660 for park activators. I'm assuming the people leading the charge have multiple activations at the same park, but I am going to make it a personal goal to try to activate as many different parks (without repeating!) as my travels in 2016 will allow. Maybe the ARRL will add a 3rd point category for unique activations - if they did, where would you rank? Leave a comment and let me know!
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