I activated US-8751, State Game Land 52. I deployed the speaker-wire doublet again in an inverted-V to operate 1W on 20M. It ran NW-SE, and I used the 4:1 and a 1:1 current balun on the coax. It tuned well in 20m, and caused no USB disconnects! My 1W FT8 signal was heard in France and Spain.
The Evolve 3 keyboard had some dead keys: w t. It doesn’t seem I can fix that, so it may need to be replaced.
I activated US-8878, State Game Land 181. It’s my 39th unique park activated on my way to the next award at 40. I made 11 FT8 contacts at 2-4W with my speaker-wire doublet pulled up into a tree. I had extended the length to 44ft length per some online recommendations.
The battery was low on my little Evolve 3 laptop, and I wanted to charge it from LiFePO, but it wouldn’t charge. It turns out that I had inserted the barrel adapter into the headphone jack instead of the tiny power port. The laptop had died at 9 contacts with 3 people calling me, so I switched to my other laptop to finish up.
10M tuned OK, 40M tuned OK, and 20M tuned easily, but with both laptops, the radio would drop the USB connection immediately upon transmitting. I may need to add a current balun between the radio and matching transformer.
I ran out to Sam Lewis, US-1418, to activate when the rain stopped.
I took a few minutes to setup my normal EFHW running North-South to operate more to the East and West, though I did get a contact to Colombia.
I operated mostly low-power FT8, 1-4W, but mostly 2W. I chased and got 1 CW contact before it started getting cold and dark.
On the way back from 3DPrintopia, I stopped to activate US-1587 Palmer State Park.
Uploading to http://pota.app/ from a phone can be difficult sometimes, but I found a way to do it.
Downloads folder,
then upload to pota.app.
If you don’t download it,
you’ll see a network error in pota.app.US-9719 Susquehanna Riverlands.
I went camping and operated there and in Michaux Forest, Pine Grove Furnace, and Caledonia. I ran the 40M EFHW in trees at the parks as a sloper and inverted-V for 40M, 10M, and 15M. I did FT8 and a little CW.
At the campground, I contacted NY and ME on CW on 40M in the morning using the Gabil slider coil and whip. I discoverd that the my older Gabil antenna with jumpers on the coil has different thread size for the whip, so not interchangeable.
I played a little FT8 at US-8834, State Game Land 136, with only 2W on my 40M EFHW in an inverted-V. I made 26 contacts, and looked for some CW, but barely heard anything.
I headed to US-4356, Boyd Big Tree Preserve for an activation. I took my time and med 51 contacts: FT8, FT4, 2 SSB, 2 CW. I stretched my 40M EFHW from pavilion to tree to the East. A bystander hung out for 40 minutes to see what I was doing, so I showed him around the bands.
While on a trip to New York with the kids, I activated a couple parks.
At US-9136, I parked in the middle, and threw the 40m EFHW into a tree to operate 20M and some 40M, FT4 & FT8 I made 13 contacts in the US, Sweden, Germany, and Spain. I got sweat on (in?) the touchpad of the laptop, so the pointer was being very jumpy and hard to control.
On the edge of US-2074, I barely got my 10 contacts in time. I used the magnetic loop, and aligned it to go up and down the coast on 40M.
