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.
I’m re-posting this from the 22 December 2023 FediFridayWinlinkNet so we can refer to it later and reflect on our stated goals.
and optimize my shackLaying out radio goals last year seemed to work really well. It provided a place for me to look as I moved through the year to compare what I said I wanted to do with what I was doing. It all seemed to track pretty well. I got deeper into CW, stuck with POTA, moved from Digital Modes in my activations to CW, and did OSPOTA as predicted. What should the goals be for this year?
My QTH has an attic dipole antenna. It’s…marginal. From where my house sits, it’s difficult to come up with a really great solution to the antenna problem. My conclusion is that I’m going to set up a veritcal beside the house and try to get a little more serious about radio from home. This solar cycle isn’t going to last forever so I should make the most of it. Besides, I’ve always wanted to dig 100 little trenches for radials. Maybe.
I would really like to hit a Kilo at West Branch State Park in 2024. That seems like something that could happen in short order. I’m already an Oasis Activator for that park and I’m over the 500 QSO mark. That’s one fish that should jump into the boat.
Getting a new state or two in the log would be great as well. Along with that would come hitting the 30 Parks Activated award. I have access to a number of parks nearby that I’ve yet to visit as well as some in Western Pennsylvania that I could get to from here rather easily. Lots of options!
Given that going to the park is almost a weekly certainty for me, I wouldn’t say that there’s much else to a POTA goal other than to keep it up. I have a lot of fun with it, so I will get outdoors and watch my silly numbers roll on the POTA site.
The 100 Days of CW never really ended. I’m still practicing regularly. My facility for POTA exchanges is solid at close to 20 wpm. That said, a free-form QSO or rag chew is out of my league mostly due to the fact that my ability to head copy is about 4 characters at a time before I start to lose them. If by the end of the year I can hold a QSO without a POTA style formulaic exchange, I will consider myself a success. I think I will give some of the slow speed nets a try as well. The K1USN SST looks good.
Playing with keyboard modes like Olivia has been on my list for a while. I think I stayed clear of it because Fldigi always feels so clunky to me. That’s not very charitable as it’s a really robust and capable piece of software, but that’s been my take. Given the interest of some fellow operators from the online world, I think I’ll dig in here. Maybe even put together a weekly net based around the mode.
There has been a resurgence in packet radio of late – at least in the online sphere in which I participate. Hearing about people setting up BBSes and pulling together networks makes me want to get involved. I’ve not logged in to a packet station outside of Winlink transactions before, so perhaps this is one that makes the list.
I think the most important part is that I will keep doing the stuff I like the most and poke at things that are interesting and new to me. OSPOTA will still be a thing and I’ve got the club newsletter to work on. Plenty of radio fun to keep me engaged and busy. The fun will be seeing what comes up along the way.
I had an ambitious set of goals for 2023:
I completed four of the five, only failing to build the QDX transceiver. It sits on my desk and perhaps will come to life in 2024. I did complete 145 CWTs (actually 146 but I forgot to submit a log for one of them). I also taught a Technician class in the spring of 2023. For POTA I did get the WAS award, and hunted more than 1000 parks.
For 2024, I think I’m going to dial things back a bit, but here we go:
2023 was a really, really great year for me with Ham Radio. I was able to get on the air and spend time investing in the hobby. It was a continual source of rejuvenation and energy for me. In short, it was exactly what a hobby should be.
The were a few areas that stood out and drove my participation this year. The biggest was, of course, Parks On The Air or POTA. I spent a lot of time in the parks and the vast majority of my contacts for 2023 were made from within park boundaries of some kind. I also managed to work radio into weekend cycling as well as family camping trips. Radio pairs nicely with trips into the field. It’s a natural thing to do and a fantastic extension of the hobby that opens up new areas to explore.
The thing that comes along part and parcel with POTA are the fun activities that they create. I think of them as little targets to engage with once in a while or statistics that might tell me where I’m spending my time and perhaps having the most fun.
Probably the weirdest POTA challenge I went for this year was the Warthog Rove. Taking a day off to hit 5 parks in rapid succession was a really good idea. I got to visit a few parks that I had never seen and thus expand my operating footprint a bit. It’s interesting to look back now and see that those were all Digital Mode activations with FT8. My thoughts on activations have changed a lot in the course of one year. I will have to do this rove again in 2024 to see it through a different lens.
Another big item was to score a Kilo at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. That’s been home base for many of my activations. That fact is in no small part due to my weekend cycling adventures with my wife. They always seem to dump us out at the park. Huh. Funny, that. Getting 1000 contacts there was a neat milestone for me. I’m almost up to 60 activations there. I’m not sure I’ll ever be “Done” with that place. It’s been too important to me over my lifetime. Again, it’s a wonderful place to spend time and play radio.
I also crossed the 400 mark for parks hunted. I’m not much of a hunter these days outside of Park To Park contacts or when friends online jump out and announce that they’re at a park, but the numbers keep ticking up. Again, it’s a fun thing to note from time to time.
Activations also occurred at new to me parks in Michigan and Kentucky while on family trips and Texas while I was traveling for business. POTA, like Elvis, is everywhere.
2023 was going to be the year that I really buckled down to learn The Code and got on the air with CW. It is perhaps surprising to me that I really knocked this one out of the park (so to speak)! The real start of the path for me was the introduction of the #cw100days tag on the Ham Radio side of Mastodon.
If you don’t know what Mastodon is, drop it in a search engine and go from there. It’s a federated social media platform. The Ham Radio community there is a blessing. It’s a diverse and inclusive group that wants nothing more than to have fun with radio.
When that hashtag started off, I was in. Daily check-ins with other members kept us all honest and the supportive comments meant the world. It was a direct result of the positive comments from other operators that inspired me to plug in the key and try it. The results had me smiling from ear to ear for quite a while. It was a definite turning point for me that eventually led to my first 100% CW Activation.
To be clear, I am not flying along and doing head copy at 20 wpm or more. I’m plugging away at about 15 wpm and scribbling in my notebook as I go. I can do a simple POTA exchange with enough skill to get the job done, but I’m not doing a big ol’ ragchew. That’s part of the goal for 2024. I will say that I am very pleased with my progress and I proudly note that every activation since 01-Oct has been CW only!
My local club is the Portage County Amateur Radio Service also knows as PCARS. I like the club and the membership. It’s a bunch of interesting hams who are into a wide array of radio interests. The club hosts multiple Special Interest Groups or SIGs and does a good job of pulling the community together for Big Fun. The club call is K8BF and the BF is, well, Big Fun, right?
The first thing I did this year to boost my participation was to get certified as a VE. Back in February, I did my first VE session and got a taste of what it’s like to mint some new hams. I’ve been to a couple of other sessions since. It feels good to be a part of that process.
Another fun event is Freeze Your Acorns Off. It’s the annual QRP contest hosted at Fred Fuller Park in Kent. It should be noted that this is not a POTA entity (bummer!). Operators from PCARS set up from within the park and run 5 watts or less trying to make Phone or Digital contacts. This year, my Dad (AC8NT) and I placed Third. We’re gonna do better this year! It’s a lot of fun to be outside in February in Ohio…kinda. But there’s good food in the shelter and lots of Hawaiian shirts to thumb our noses at the weather. This year, the contest is in March, so maybe it will be warmer?
The other event that I really got into was Ohio State Parks on the Air. This contest dates back to 2008 (which is before the big National Parks on the Air event that ARRL started that led to POTA as we know it today). It’s phone only and runs for 6 hours. It’s a blast! I placed somewhere in the middle this year, but had a great time doing it. The contest is run by PCARS members and as such the club has an interest in it. I will definitely be out there again next year.
My biggest contribution to the club is just starting. With the end of 2023 comes a change to the editorship of The Radiogram, the PCARS award winning monthly newsletter. The new editor is, well, me. I’m starting with the January 2024 issue and I’m looking forward to it. It’s a way to contribute in an asynchronous fashion which is good because it’s very hard for me to get to club events and all with the competing priorities within my family. We already have a lot of “Divide And Conquor” going on here. It feels good to do something for the club.
I picked up a few new pieces of gear this year. Probably the most impactful was the Elecraft AX1 antenna. It has totally changed the way I deploy in the field. Maybe I’ll write something about it someday, but I don’t know what I could say other than, “Wow. That’s a good portable antenna!”
My Dad AC8NT and I made the run down to Hamvention this year and it was a lot of fun! We got milkshakes and Young’s Dairy and bought some QRP Labs kits from our buddy Hans. It was worth the drive.
This year, I even grabbed a new rig for grins and have had a great time getting to know the TR-45L. It will see more air time in the new year for sure.
The addition of little bits and pieces that have maximized my enjoyment with radio were definitely noticed, though I will not enumerate them here.
2023 was great! It started off with a challenge and some new ideas of how to help out the ham radio community and has ended up with a number of accomplishments that I didn’t expect. My engagement with the hobby is changing and that’s good. There are so many threads to tug on and interesting things to chase that I can only see 2024 being even more fun!
So with that, I’m back to the field. Thanks for reading and 72!
As of 0300z today (11 PM last night, acutally), I completed my 120th CWT (CWops CW Contest). There are four short 1 hour contests per day (1300, 1900, 0300, and 0700Z), so at least 208 each year. CWops awards medals for participation at the following levels: Bronze 50, Silver 80, Gold 120.
Last year I participated in 167 CWTs. There are 48 more possible this year, so I don’t think I will finish with as many as I did in 2022, but my goal for the year was 120, and I’ve accomplished that.
Thank you CWops!
I just received confirmation that I have 1,000 unique parks confirmed as a hunter. That was also one of my goals for 2023. At this point I only have one goal left: To build my QDX Digital Transceiver and get it on the air.
In terms of POTA, I have found that the confirmation rate is a bit low. According to my log I’ve worked about 1,500 unique parks, but only 1,000 of them have confirmed. That matches up pretty well with my LotW confirmation rate.
Hunter Award for working 1,000 unique parks
Yesterday I received confirmation for park #900 (). This puts me closer to one of my goals for 2023, working 1000 parks.
My goals for 2023 are:
So two out of five have been completed. At the half-way point for 2023 I have 80+ CWTs under my belt, so as long as my antenna stays up and I can continue to find my way down to the basement, I should be able to complete that one. At risk is the QRP-Labs QDX Digital Transceiver kit – I need to get that done!
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