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This past Wednesday I woke up at 3:00am, with temperatures just under 30 degrees Fahrenheit (-1 C) and made my way to the Harrisburg Airport in my home state of Pennsylvania. By the end of the day I was setting up my radio equipment in Oleta River State Park for another WWFF-KFF activation just outside Miami, Florida, where temperatures were 82 degrees Fahrenheit (28 C). It's nice to experience some warm weather in February!
For me, this was another one of my work trips that took me on the road. Since I was visiting our Miami office, I looked around at the parks that were on the list at the KFF web site. The Oleta River State Park is a little gem, kind of hidden just at the edge of Miami - I'm sure that a lot of people pass right by it without ever realizing it is even there. If you slow down to have a look, within just a few minutes of the hustle and bustle of both Miami and Ft. Lauderdale is this:
Another neat thing about this park is that for less than the price of most chain hotels, you can have a very unique experience staying in one of their small cabins:
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While these are neat little cabins, I will warn you that it is much more fun if you are an "earthy" person. Creature comforts are limited to mattresses that have seen better days, the furniture you see on the porch in the picture above, picnic tables, and a communal bathhouse (with only 1 working shower in the men's room!) Notable things that are missing if you are accustomed to standard hotel chains are things like bed linens, pillows, towels, toiletries etc. Any time you stay in a lodge/cottage/cabin inside a state park, think of it more like camping where you need all the stuff you would need if you were camping, except for your tent.
For those of us that don't mind a little grit however, this was an awesome place to set up and play radio! The bunk beds quickly became the place where I threw my luggage. There was a small, wall mounted table which immediately became my operating desk, and (after emptying it) one of my Pelican Storm Cases become my chair. Operating position - check. |
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While the less hardy folks out there might be worried about the rodent sized crack under the door, for me this made a simple, and perfect place to run coax out to my antenna! Once again, I was confronted with a situation where I didn't have any decent size trees within reach of the amount of feedline I have, so I used my buddipole mast to support my Quick and Dirty Feedpoint that I used to feed 2 inverted V dipoles - one for 20 meters and one for 40 meters. Because the soil here is a weird mix of sand / rock / coral I couldn't really use my ground screw that I normally use to anchor the center of my mast, so I made use of what was available - the picnic table!
So with that - antennas were up and ready to go, and I was able to start operating. With conditions being what they are, and my antennas being so close to the ground, most of my contacts were domestic, but I did have 1 with Italy (on 40 meters, with an antenna only about 12 feet of the ground!), 1 with the Azores, and 1 with Puerto Rico. The biggest highlight however, was my first ever CW contacts! My first ever CW contact was with Richard - W0IS [ed. Rick has his own blog! - www.onetuberadio.com check it out!] and my second came from Chuck - KO4SB. Thanks guys! Since I still didn't own a key (I just bought one today) I made those CW contacts using the Up and Down buttons on my mic via the "MicKey" option on my Yeasu 857d. If anyone wants to know how to do that let me know, because it isn't intuitive, and you have to have the settings on the rig just right - I'm willing to share so you don't have to mess around trying to figure it out like I did!
Because I like to have some "lessons learned" every time I do something like this, here's a list of some of the things I took away from this activation, that might help you if you do something similar (of course, you might be a pro, and already knew these things...)
- If you travel a lot make sure you buy non-aerosol bug spray (you can't take aerosol on the plane, even in checked bags. I should have known this with all my traveling I do, but I guess never considered it before.)
- Make a checklist of things you need, and keep it with your gear/traveling supplies so you don't forget anything. I forgot a towel, so each day after my shower I had to dry myself with my shirt from the day before! I also had to use a shoe to pound in my tent stakes that I use to tie off my dipole ends!
- It's cheaper to fly with two 50lb pound bags (on AA $60), then it is to fly with a single overweight 70lb bag (on AA- $125.) See my post about re-organizing my luggage.
- If you think cats fighting make an awful sound, you've never heard a racoon fight.
- There are some awesome little natural spaces hidden right in the middle of our populated areas - go look for them!
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