As I've been doing my NPOTA activations I've been trying to do as many different parks as possible. I travel around for work, and when I'm in an area that's close to a park that I've already activated, I try to look for a different one. This idea is how I ended up at unit NM22, the Roger Williams National Memorial.
This was an interesting one because on the NPOTA page it was marked with a single *, which means it is a sensitive unit. It also had only had 4 activations so far, and it is an "urban" park. In spite of these things trying to scare me off, I looked on Google Maps and it looked they had their own parking area. That was all I needed to know, in order to decide to drive by and scope it out.
When I got there, the actual park visitor center was closed, but the park was bustling with activity - being an urban park there were people walking dogs, jogging and walking through, people sitting at picnic tables, etc. The parking was also definitely part of the park, as it clearly stated "Parking for Roger William National Memorial Park visitors only." Well - I was a park visitor (even though I was only visiting from my car...) so I parked! The signs also said there was a 2 hour limit. I knew that was plenty of time, so I booted up the laptop, turned on the rig, and made a bunch of people happy chasers, because with only 4 prior activations, this was a first for quite a few folks!
The icing on the cake was, because I can get internet through the cell network while mobile (usually!), I was able to upload to Logbook of the World before I even pulled out of the lot! I ended up doing about 80 contacts in under 2 hours, including setup (which really was only plugging headphones into my radio and booting up my computer) and teardown (uploading to LOTW, shutting down the computer, and taking the headphones off.)
With how easy it was to do an evening activation of this park for a couple hours from my mobile, I'm not exactly sure why my activation was only the 5th. If you have a mobile HF, give this one a go. If you need to set up a station, it might be a different story though...
bye for now!
This was an interesting one because on the NPOTA page it was marked with a single *, which means it is a sensitive unit. It also had only had 4 activations so far, and it is an "urban" park. In spite of these things trying to scare me off, I looked on Google Maps and it looked they had their own parking area. That was all I needed to know, in order to decide to drive by and scope it out.
When I got there, the actual park visitor center was closed, but the park was bustling with activity - being an urban park there were people walking dogs, jogging and walking through, people sitting at picnic tables, etc. The parking was also definitely part of the park, as it clearly stated "Parking for Roger William National Memorial Park visitors only." Well - I was a park visitor (even though I was only visiting from my car...) so I parked! The signs also said there was a 2 hour limit. I knew that was plenty of time, so I booted up the laptop, turned on the rig, and made a bunch of people happy chasers, because with only 4 prior activations, this was a first for quite a few folks!
The icing on the cake was, because I can get internet through the cell network while mobile (usually!), I was able to upload to Logbook of the World before I even pulled out of the lot! I ended up doing about 80 contacts in under 2 hours, including setup (which really was only plugging headphones into my radio and booting up my computer) and teardown (uploading to LOTW, shutting down the computer, and taking the headphones off.)
With how easy it was to do an evening activation of this park for a couple hours from my mobile, I'm not exactly sure why my activation was only the 5th. If you have a mobile HF, give this one a go. If you need to set up a station, it might be a different story though...
bye for now!
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