On the spur of the moment, my wife, Silvia, and I decided to head up to East Tawas, MI on Lake Huron for an overnight excursion.  It was a nice change of pace, and it helped us beat the heat a little.

One of the things I most enjoy about East Tawas is being able to operate at Tawas Point State Park (US-1545). It’s a two-fer in that operating from there is not only a POTA activation, but also a lighthouse activation, as the park is home to the Ottawa Point/Tawas Point Light (ARLHS USA-837). And, as a little bit of a bonus, last weekend was National Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend.

It’s about a two and a half hour drive from Ann Arbor to the park, but it took us at least 30 minutes extra, due to construction near Flint. We got there about 1:30 pm, and enjoyed the lunch we had brought while we looked out over Lake Huron.

I then found a nice shady spot to set up the rig. Last time I was here two years ago, I set up in the sun, and my KX-3 got so hot, I thought I’d damaged it. This time, in the shade, the radio stayed nice and cool.

I was on the air for a little over two hours and made about 30 contacts. Most of my contacts were on 20-meter CW, but at the end, I ventured into the phone portion of the band and was able to make four park-to-park contacts. I figured—correctly, I think—that I’d have better success hunting than calling CQ on phone. One tactic that seemed to work very well is to add “park to park” to my call. That got the activators’ attention even though my 15 W was certainly not the strongest signal on the band.

A noisy activation at Tawas State Harbor

We stayed at the Tawas Bay Beach Resort that night. It’s a nice hotel, has its own little beach, and is close to downtown East Tawas. It’s also right next to Tawas State Harbor (US-6812).

Since we had to check out of the hotel by 11:00 am, I decided to get up a little early and make some contacts in the morning. That way, my wife could stay in bed and not have to sit out in the park while I operated. I left the room a little after 7:30 am, hiked over to the park, and was set up just before 8:00 am.

When I turned on the radio, though, I was quite dismayed to hear all the noise. It was peaking at S5! When I conjured up the plan to activate this park, I hadn’t realized that it was right next to an RV campground. My guess is that all that noise was coming from the campers. I tried re-orienting my doublet antenna, but that didn’t help at all.

Not only that, band conditions seemed quite poor yesterday morning. There were only a few strong signals. Couple that with having to operate with the noise reducer on means that I’m sure that I missed a few calls just because they were below the noise floor and I couldn’t hear them. If one of them was you, please accept my apologies.

I operated until about 8:30 am, when I decided to give up fighting the noise and band conditions. Overall, I managed to make 16 contacts in about 35 minutes, so actually not a bad rate.

I packed up and headed back to the room. When I got back, Silvia was ready for breakfast, and so was I. We had a nice breakfast at the hotel, then took a walk out to the end of the breakwater at Tawas State Harbor. It was a little bit warm out there in the sun, but quite enjoyable looking out over the lake. From the shore, you could just spot the lighthouse, which had to be at least a couple miles away.

After our walk, we packed up the car and headed home. There were no major traffic holdups on the way home, and we made it in two and a half hours.

I never thought of myself as an award chaser.

Maybe like many kids, the endless pressure to achieve a scholastic level as measured by an exam put me off of any more “exams” and by loose association awards. I don’t want to be measured anymore.

However, what I did enjoy as a kid was hearing voices from far away places sharing far aware news that in truth was somewhat lost on me, I just wanted the confirmation card.

The most exciting were always from somewhere exotic sounding to this teenager; maybe India, maybe Australia or even Canada sprinkled amongst all the east European cultural “happy” cards I would also receive.

If I’m chasing an award surely it must be the ARRL DXCC that is the mark of true afficiando that has confirmation of contacts with a minimum of a 100 countries. True that was fun but WAS seemed to capture my imagination in a different way.

Maybe it’s because I’m an “ersatz” American bearing a passport but growing up a million miles away. Lost in the history of the USA is actually quite enlightening and enriching. Lost in old National Geographic’s that paint a picture of colored canyons in Utah, yachts tied up in slips at the end of a yards in Florida or yet another story of Mount Vernon. It all tells the fabric of my adopted country, a place that I have a deep respect and admiration for.

WAS is an award offered by the US’s amateur radio league (ARRL) for anyone global that makes contact with an amateur in each and every US state, hence Worked All States. Sounds pretty simple and at some level it is. Where you can make it all the more interesting is to slice the WAS and achieve it for as specific communication method such as voice or morse code or harder still for a specific band such as 20m, 40m, 10m etc.

Location play a part as slicing it one way (say 40m) might be much easier from the middle of the country with a smaller distribution of distances to each and every state. Think about it, Nebraska, a fine place to live is roughly no more than 1,200 miles to any of the lower 48 unlike Maine, an equally wonderful place to live is various distances up to 2,500 miles to each and every lower 48. WAS on 40m might be much harder in Maine than Nebraska.

WAS so far….

Like many things in life starting something is easy and finishing it somewhat harder, think 80/20 rule.

I’ve been nibbling away at 15m and 10m WAS for a while. Contests don’t seem to have closed the final mile and I’m passionately trying to gain 3 more states on 10m phone and a similar number on 15m phone.

Truth is I would have been fine with phone WAS on multiple bands but now I’ve made some progress on CW and especially CW WAS, a whole new goal of per band triple crown awaits that is WAS phone, morse and digital. Drats, I’ve moved the goal posts…..

Counting sunspots…..Cycle 25

Whether your iconic 1700s event is the Battle of Culloden (1746, think Outlander), the French Indian Wars (1756-1763), the American Revolution (1765-1783) or Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, some “enlightened” astronomers started counting sunspots and over time determined a cycle of 11 years between maximum count with a big dip in-between.

The more recent science of radio in the 1900s lead to a realization that our ability to communicate on different bands is correlated to where the sun, our sun is in it’s 11 year cycle.

Nearing the current cycles maxima, we get to enjoy easier, almost global communication on bands such as 10m and 15m that are hitherto unheard of 5 years either side of the maxima.

Here we are at the peak of cycle 25 and it’s time to close those WAS goals on 10m, 15m and possible others between and around.

WAS and SOTA, a new goal made in heaven?

I’ve wandered the world of SOTA for almost 8 years. Goals change, radios change, antennas change, as do I. The enthusiasm for racing up the same local peaks year in a year out has waned and maybe best deferred. New peaks can be fun and my 8 year journey has taken me to 280 different peaks (no repeats) across the western USA and parts of Europe.

WAS requires all contacts for a single award to be made within a 50 mile radius of each other and with that I lassoed about 60 peaks not far from home. Most never visited as most are small “urban” peaks offering measly single or two points compared to “giants” in the San Gabriels and San Bernardinos offering eight points.

Now I have a new goal to further my WAS and grow my leg muscles…activate as many of the 60 (less what I have done or are off limits, think USMC base) as soon as possible

What’s in your WAS circle?

Nearly twelve years ago, I wrote about completing Worked All States on six bands. I'd worked all states on 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10m. About three years ago, I finished up 30m, so now it was seven bands. However, finishing 17 and 12m seemed like it would take forever. I felt stalled out.

A couple of months ago, it occurred to me that I was only four band-states away from Ten-Band Worked All States. I needed Delaware on 17m, Kentucky on 12m, and Alaska and Hawaii on 6m. 

The 6m states would have to wait -- I'd need very special conditions to work either state. But with the recent rise in sunspots, working those close-in states on 17 and 12m seemed do-able. The biggest problem would be operating the Gwinnett station. That was solved after I configured the RemoteRig devices to allow remote operation. 

Indeed, the first afternoon operating remotely, I was able to work Kentucky on 12m and the LoTW confirmation came the next day. Finishing off 17m took a month longer.

It was surprising to me how calling CQ DEL AA4LR EM83 would gather so many responses from people who were not in Delaware. I worked at least one station in Delaware, but the LoTW confirmation was not forthcoming. Then the RemoteRig Control device no longer powered up.

I got lucky one Friday afternoon when I was in Gwinnett county and managed to get a legitimate answer to my CQ DEL message and a confirmation later that day. I'd done it. Worked All States on Nine Bands. 

Now, I just have to wait for those special conditions in order to work Alaska and Hawaii on 6m....