US-1296 Douthat State Park is located in Millboro, Virginia. The wife and I were here during Labor Day weekend for a bit of camping to close out the camping season for us this year and I brought along my radio gear to play some Parks On The Air. The weekend turned out to be a trying one for me on the air. I only brought the KX3 and the KH1 and their respective whip antennas, two EFHW antennas, and my Buddipole dipole. I was not able to deploy a wire antenna at our campsite and the small compromised whips were not seemingly working very well so the Buddipole was the antenna that got me on the air.
We arrived at our campsite on Saturday afternoon around check-in time. After a couple of hours of unpacking the vehicle and setting up camp, I sat down with my KH1 to scope out the airwaves. Neither my wife nor I had any cell coverage inside the park so I wasn’t able to spot myself on the POTA site nor see if the RBN was picking me up. I’d scheduled my POTA activation on the web site the day before we left home, but having been the first time doing that, I wasn’t sure how it worked, or if it did. Someone was on the frequency I had scheduled to be on so I assume it didn’t work as I thought it would have or someone took the frequency after calling QRL? and hearing nothing. I decided I’d do a bit of hunting and heard KD9LSU calling CQ POTA. They managed to hear me and gave a 339 RST, which seemed realistic since I was getting no responses to my calls for CQ POTA. This was my first contact on 20 meters with the KH1, which alleviated some fears I had started to have due to not being able to use 20 meters from my home with the KH1. For whatever reason, possibly the low power output, the KH1 doesn’t even get picked up on the RBN from home when on 20 meters. I called CQ quite a lot after that but never got any other callers. I gave up after a little while and the wife and I focused on building a campfire and cooking dinner.
The following morning, I called CQ POTA a few times on 14.035 MHz and got one caller. Then it was crickets. I broke out the Buddipole after deciding getting a wire into a tree wouldn’t have been possible without disturbing other campers and set it up for 20 meters. I put it on my RigExpert analyzer and then the batteries died in the analyzer. My KH1 and KX3 both could tune it just fine, but I wasn’t sure if it was even close to resonant on the band. After realizing the analyzer took AA batteries (not a 9v like I had thought) and that we had brought some with us, I put the antenna on the analyzer and got it tuned to the CW portion of the 20 meter band. I had the Buddipole oriented roughly in an East-West configuration. There was a steep incline to the West which I had assumed would help reflect my signal heading East, but I didn’t get any callers in Europe, but did get one from Oregon. I’m still reading through the ARRL Antenna Book so maybe someday that will be something I can explain more easily. I wasn’t having much luck that morning even with the KX3 so I set everything aside so the wife and I could do some other things that we had planned to do while a the park.
Douthat State Park is situated about an hour to the West of Roanoke, VA in the George Washington & Jefferson National Forests. One of the main attractions is Douthat Lake which is a 50-acre lake that is stocked with trout for the fishermen and provides some boating activities like kayaking, paddle boarding, and canoeing. We wanted to rent a couple of Hydrobikes, but they were the more popular rental vehicle so we ended up renting a canoe for a few hours and lazily paddled around the lake a couple of times. My wife was a mermaid in her past life apparently, so any time we can get her on or in a body of water, she’s a happy camper. Pun intended.
Later that evening, I decided my best bet for activating US-1296 was to participate in the weekend’s K1USN Slow Speed Test. Surprisingly, I didn’t have much of a problem hearing or being heard during that hour of CW fun and managed exactly 10 contacts which I used along with one more the following morning to log a successful activation of the park.
Thanks to all who I got in my log over the weekend. I think if we are to camp at Douthat State Park again, I will possibly do my activation from around the lake instead of near the bottom of a hollow. Lowering my horizon a bit might be beneficial. We’ll see.
Until next time, 73.
K2MAS
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