There is always some new award to chase in the Parks on the Air program.  This morning, I finally received the Late Shift Hunter award.  This took years for me as I am rarely at the radio in the evenings.  But with the solar conditions causing so much difficulty during the afternoon, I have spent some time hunting after sunset.  As it turns out, that often yields excellent results on 40 and 20 meters.

On Sunday, I finally achieved the 1,500 unique park mark for Parks on the Air.  It took me 349 days to go from 1,000 to 1,500 parks. Perhaps getting to 2,000 parks might be a good goal for 2025.

This was also one of my goals for 2024.  My remaining goal for 2024 is the Gold Medal for CWops CWT contests.  I am currently at 95 contests, and need 120 for the gold, so 25 more to go.  I usually do 3 of the 4 contest a week, so I might check that goal off by the end of September.

A nice surprise showed up yesterday when I worked Ricardo VY2AN who was at a park on Prince Edward Island (stunningly beautiful island).  PEI completed my Worked All Provinces award for POTA.  My thanks to him and all the other Canadian activators!

As of today, I have 1426 unique POTA parks confirmed.  Twenty days ago, the count was 1401, so I’m adding a scooch over 1 park a day.  So the end of September seems like when I might get my goal of 1500 completed.  And the CWT Gold Medal should wrap up by the end of October, which is when I should hit 120 (currently at 84, so 36 remain).  Fingers are crossed!

One of my goals for 2024 is to have confirmed contacts with at least 1,500 unique POTA parks.  As of Saturday June 22, I had 1,401 confirmed.

So 99 more parks to go.  Things have slowed down considerably as propagation during daylight hours no longer favors fairly productive areas, as well as the need to work a unique park.

Things have slowed down a bit.  I suspect Bill hasn’t been out in the early morning hours as often as he has in the past due to band conditions (the past month+ has seen very weak signals on most bands up here in New England).

Nevertheless, six weeks after the last Operator-to-Operator award, I received one for 450 park contacts with K4NYM today.  Thanks for always being there Bill!!!

Willy, W1LY, is a dear friend of mine.  He’s the sort of person who is always looking to help, and has serious skills to make things happen.  Here at casa WB4SON, for example, he launched a 160-meter Inverted-L antenna in the air.  That enabled me to complete WAS and DXCC on the 160-meter band, and is the only antenna I use on HF on all bands.

Willy was with me on my first POTA activation, and managed to get me hooked.  I was ecstatic yesterday when I received an Operator To Operator Award for hunting him during 50 of his park activations.  Most recently he has been logistics for his wife Linda during her bucket list hike of the Appalachian Trail.  She has completed the trail from its origin in Georgia through the Vermont border.  Many of his activations have been at various parks along the trail.

Thank you Willy!

Aurora watching turned into a thing when the largest Geomagnetic Storm in more than two decades gave us Earthlings a spectacular view of the power and majesty of our sun last night.  Sadly, Rhode Island weather wasn’t as cooperative as it could have been, as it was very cloudy until about 3:30 AM this morning.  But that didn’t stop my wife, daughter, and me from heading out at O’dark hundred to see the sights.

View to NW around 3:30 AM near Schartner Farms in Exeter RI

My wife and daughter can be seen on the shore of Barber Pond (POTA US-10548) around 4:00 AM enjoying the celestial display due west

This amazing global display of Auroral activity was spawned by the first few of a large series of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), impacting the Earth Friday afternoon.  This drove the Kp level up to 9 and generated a G5 storm.  While things tapered off a bit this morning, they are back up to a level 8, with several more CMEs due to impact us in the next day.  Those with clear weather may be lucky enough to see more displays tonight.

By the way, viewing the event through recent smartphones will reveal more colors and details than can be seen by the naked eye.  In the examples above, the Aurora was occurring over the West Coast thousands of miles away  Had the sky been clear around 10 PM, the display would have been on top of us.  Nevertheless we could still see the Aurora with our naked eyes, but mostly saw the whitish green colors of the shimmering curtains.

A couple of new POTA awards came in this week – first was the Operator To Operator Award with Bill K4NYM.  Unsurprisingly another Bear Cave Award came is as well, this time for Green Swamp US-5330 in Florida (thank you Bill).

My wife and I headed to our favorite park, Beavertail (US-2868) on Conanicut Island, RI,  to watch the Eclipse this afternoon.  We were too far to the east to enjoy totality, but we figured it would be fun to see 91% of the sun occluded.  The weather sort of cooperated, with thin high wispy clouds and a temperature in the low 50s.  But I didn’t quite plan on the stiff breeze blowing right off the water into our faces – I was shivering, especially my hands.

I figured that I could use this as an opportunity to try out my Elecraft KH1 and it’s built-in 41-inch whip antenna at a park.  Despite my trembling fingers, I managed to make ten QSOs between 2:15 and 3:09 PM, all of which were during part of the eclipse.  I was actually pleasantly surprised  that folks could even hear me, but they did with a few fills required and signal reports ranging from 539 to 599.  That completes another of my goals for 2024, by the way.

My view looking SSW from Beavertail – it was a nice early spring day but WINDY.

My Elecraft KH1 laying down on my chair. It was fairly easy to work 10 stations with the attached 41″ whip (and 13 foot counterpoise wire laying on the ground)

I was surprised to receive a QSL in the mail from Bill Brown, K4NYM, who has made over 190,000 QSOs from 388 parks.  I can’t imagine the number of QSL cards he must send out!  I can’t even imagine the amount of work required to log that many contacts and upload them.  THANK YOU BILL!!!

But in non-K4NYM news, I received a Repeat Offender Award for a park in Ohio.  So I do have contact with folks other than Bill.

Well a Bear Cave, of course!  I just received the Repeat Offender Bear Cave Award for working US-4559 sixty times!  This is one of K4NYM’s favorite parks, judging from how frequently he’s there.

Lest you think I only work Bill, I am 156 parks away from hunting 1,500 unique ones.  I usually work about 6 HF Parks on the Air most weekdays, and twice that on the weekends.

As of yesterday, I’ve bumped into Bill Brown K4NYM in over 300 Parks on the Air!  Bill is an avid activator and I usually manage to work him in two different parks (sometimes more) almost every day.

I’m sort of amazed how many times I’ve worked Bill Brown K4NYM as he does activations in Florida.  Usually it is several times a day as he moves from park to park.  Honestly, it’s pretty easy once you start paying attention to his operating routines.  I picked up another Repeat Offender award, as well as completed my 250 Operator to Operator award.

I noted that today I reached the 1300 mark for parks hunted.  One of my 2024 goals was to have 1500 parks in the log, so that is going well.  Perhaps I will be at 2000 by year’s end.

A bit more than a week ago I discovered that there is another level of Repeat Offender award, called the Fox Den.  I picked up that award thanks to Bill Brown K4NYM – he and I are about 16 contacts away from 250.

I’ve been having fun hunting Bill Brown K4NYM and work him usually at least once a day.  I actually had a SSB contact with him, which was our first time in 212 contacts.  I suspect by early March we will have gotten to 250 Operator to Operator

With Bill’s K4NYM help activating Colt Creek State Park, I’ve picked up another repeat offender award park K-1848

By the way, I have about 233 more parks to go to obtain my 2,000th unique park, and about 10 more contacts with K4NYM before I have 200 with him.