Carrying the momentum forward from yesterday’s successful activation of US-5510, I ventured just down the road from there and activated US-0712 Manassas National Battlefield today.
The morning started off a bit dreary outside as a bit of rain had made its way through the area overnight. I was a bit hesitant to get out at first, but not long after my second cup of coffee, I started seeing the clouds break and bright blue shine through. I got the car packed up and headed down the road before wasting any more time. US-5510 and US-0712 are within a mile or so from one another and I originally planned to activate both parks, but I’ll have to save that for another day. Both parks are within a half hour of my home, so getting out there isn’t going to be a big issue as long as I can get myself motivated to go more often.
Manassas National Battlefield is somewhat large. Much of the area is either wooded or cleared with several historic buildings scattered throughout the park. Surprisingly, there are few suitable locations within the park to easily set up a POTA activation. For US-0712, I’d wager most, if not all, of the previous activators have used the same location as I did today. (Update: July 2025. Amateur radio operating in the park is only allowed at the Brownsville Picnic Area) In the southwestern section of the park lies the Brownsville Picnic Area. The picnic area is not near much at all, nestled alongside an open field that seemed to be a popular location for horseback riding. Your best bet is to arrive in the early parts of the morning and get in as much on-air time as you can before people start showing up to have their lunches outside. Having planned the activation for a weekday, I expected not to see anyone the entire time I was there since there aren’t any businesses close by and only a handful of homes within a short drive. I was surprised, though, that several families ended up arriving near the noon hour to have picnics. As such, having successfully activated the park, I packed up and left. The actual picnic area wasn’t large enough for me to continue operating and still maintain a safe distance between my antenna and the folks who had been arriving.
Another thing about this activation was that there were no sufficiently lofty trees to toss my EFHW wire into, so I got a bit more familiar with the Wolf River Coils coil and whip kit, the Silver Bullet Platinum Take-It-Along, that I had used yesterday on 15-meters. Today, I set up on 20-meters and found tuning the coil to be fairly straightforward and simple enough. Again, I used sixteen 14-foot radials and 25 feet of RG-8X coax to feed the antenna. I got the coil tuned pretty well to around the middle of the 20-meter band and then used the FT-710’s internal tuner to get me down to 1:1.
At one point, I heard WH6S in Kekaha, Hawaii and hurriedly tried to work him, but couldn’t reach him even after pushing up to 40 Watts. I was a bit weary of pushing more than that since I’ve heard you can blow your final amplifier quite easily when using digital modes and high power output. I might have to remember to try to get him in the log again soon. His QRZ page says he is on FT8 almost every morning around 1500Z, which is around the time I heard him calling CQ from over here on the east coast. Perhaps I need to consider a directional antenna. A Buddiepole maybe?
I’m very pleased with the Wolf River Coils TIA so far. It was deployed in a wide open area today and it was moderately breezy at times. I saw no need to guy the antenna or weight the tripod legs. I can imagine the need to do if using a longer whip than the 102-inch one that comes with the TIA kit. Say if I were to attach the MFJ 1979 whip and fully extend it to its near 17′ length, I’d probably have to at least put weights on the tripod legs to keep it all from toppling over. Speaking of the MFJ 1979 whip, I want to attach it to the WRC the next time I’m out to see how difficult it will be to tune in some of the lower bands or to find out if it’s even feasible to put a whip that long on the Silver Bullet 1000. I’ll need to know its capabilities for when I want to get some of those late-shift POTA activations later this Summer. The SB1000 is supposed to tune all the way down to 80-meters with the 102″ whip, so I might not even bother with the MFJ 1979.
Until next time, 73.
K2MAS
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