Kerr Lake, otherwise known as Buggs Island Lake depending on who you ask or what map you look at, is situated along the Virginia-North Carolina border near Clarksville, Virginia. Two Virginia state parks are along the banks of this body of water, Staunton River State Park and Occoneechee State Park. The wife and I enjoyed our first camping trip of the season in early June at Occoneechee SP. Our plan was to camp along the lake bank and put our kayaks in the water right at the campsite, but this didn’t work out for us since between the campsite and the water’s edge was a steep bank of granite boulders. We ended up having to load the kayaks into the SUV and drive them up to one of three boat launches in the park and that worked out well enough for us. It’s nice to have inflatable kayaks as they are easy to transport.
A personal plan, for me at least, was to do a bit of Parks On The Air operating for the first time in a few months. I brought along a couple of antennas and my Elecraft KX3. I ended up deploying my Wolf River Coils Silver Bullet Take-It-Along since I hadn’t used it in forever and because I thought a vertical might do pretty well on the bank of a lake.
The Wolf River Coils Silver Bullet Take-It-Along is a vertical antenna system that consists of an extendable stainless whip, a Silver Bullet loading coil, and an aluminum tripod mount with screw-on aluminum legs. The whole kit fits nicely into a paddle camera tripod bag and is as easy to deploy as it is to put away. Performance is pretty good also, I’ve found. The only dislike I have with this antenna, and any that involves a tuning coil, is that changing bands requires a manual adjustment to be made to the coil tap and then a check of the tuning on an antenna analyzer. It can sometimes mean a lot of back and forth between the ends of your coax feed line. Besides that little gripe, I actually really like the antenna and have made a mental note to use it more often.
For my Morse keying, I used my American Morse Equipment Porta-paddles, which performed spectacularly. I could have used a non-slip pad underneath them at times, but overall, I think I’ve found my new favorite portable paddles. You can see these paddles in my Morse Key Collection here.
As this trip was a camping trip with the wife first and a POTA activation second, my on-air activities came in spurts. A little here, a little there. I broke no records over the course of our stay in terms of number of QSOs logged, but I managed to activate the park once for each day we were there.
We enjoyed a very nice stay at Occoneechee State Park. Kerr Lake is a nice lake for kayaking and there were fish everywhere. It almost makes me want to get my fishing license and buy some tackle, but I keep telling myself I don’t need another expensive hobby. So far I’ve been able to talk myself down off that ledge.
Clarksville, VA is a quaint little town with a main drag down the middle of it with small residential streets on either side. The town shuts down early so if you need anything from the store, you better get it earlier in the day. Buggs Island Brewery is an alright stop for a cold brew and a bite to eat. The wife and I enjoyed our meals eaten there and the view of the lake from the outside seating area. Just up the street from there, we stopped and bought some fresh local produce and a bag of boiled peanuts. Boiled peanuts are an interesting thing. I imagine you must have had to grow up eating them to really enjoy them. For us, they were not that great.
All in all, we had a great time and I enjoyed my successful Parks On The Air activation of US-1311.
Until next time, 73.
K2MAS
K2MAS.net 