When you have activated the same park nearly 160 times, it starts to get a bit routine. Certainly, any day that you’re alive and able to participate in ham radio is a day to be thankful for, but I have to admit that lately I’ve gotten rather bored with activating from the Presidio of San Francisco US-7889.
What could I do to spice things up a little bit? Recently, the W6CSN shack welcomed a new member into the QRP radio lineup, the venerable Heathkit HW-8. This got me to thinking about the days when the HW-8 was new, QRP was a niche part of the hobby, and the Internet was something that connected mainframes at universities.
That’s an idea! Try to activate a park for POTA without using the internet tools on which we’ve come to rely. The rules are: no self spotting on the POTA website and no looking at the POTA spots page to find stations to hunt. If you want to hunt, you’re going to have tune around and listen for stations calling CQ.
The HW-8 would not debut on this activation as it’s waiting on a power cord and we haven’t really gotten to know each other yet. Instead, the trusty KH1 would be the radio choice today, coupled to a quarter wave vertical on 20 meters and sending via the Bencher BY-1.
I set up camp on 14.059 MHz and began calling CQ POTA with no prescheduled activation, no spot on pota.app, not even looking at my phone to see what the propagation numbers were saying. In fact, I only used my phone as a camera to take pictures for this field report.
Within a few minutes I got my first call, from Ken VE7HI. The next 40 minutes were spent calling CQ and hunting other stations until I had six contacts in the log. Then came the long, desolate hour of calling with no responses and being unable to break through any of the “pileups” around other activators. The drought ended with a P2P with NR1D/0 at Barr Lake State Park in Colorado and 15 minutes later the activation was complete with K6BBQ coming through for QSO number 11.
While the internet certainly makes it so much easier, this activation proves that the QRPer can be successful in POTA with just a 5 watt radio and a half decent antenna. If you are looking to spice up your POTA routine, why not give an “offline” activation a try?
72 de W6CSN
Thaks Matt – sorry for not being on so much lately tween eye surguries and solar crap its been rough — as for ur comment about cell and net – come on up north here – no cell no net – my first 2 activations ever this fall were fly by the seat of ur pants lol – thanks for sharing 73 dit dit
Nice to hear from you Brian. Hope to see you on the air again soon.
ubetchya
I started off with an HW8 many many many years ago. My antenna was a Barker&Williamson apartment antenna. Still use the HW8 to this day, better antenna system now. 72….
Fred/KA4RUR
Ah yes, the B&W Apartment Antenna- that’s what I started out with as a Novice in the 1980s using a loaner TS-520. Good times!
I still have the coils, but the whip and mounting bracket seem to have gone their own way.
Impressive! Congratulations!
Off line is the way it used to be. I returned to amateur radio recently and the information instantly available now is amazing.
It’s great to be back.
72,
Chuck WD9EGW
Hi Matt,
nice view that remembered me beeing there in 1994.
My first Flora Fauna activations in 2017 I’d done also without any internet on 40m.
The most exciting experience at that activation was as someome spotted me. It was a real pileup.
I like QRP for that moments.
72,
Jens/DH1AKY
Brings back memories of my Novice HW-16 — I built it myself — and calling CQ over and over until someone found me and I FOUND THEM. We were “rock bound” (crystal controlled) back in those days so it was like feeling our way in the dark to find one another. Taught me how to really “operate” on the air and we also got to know those radios! Thanks for reminding me. You’re right, today is so much easier, yet boredom does set in. Great idea for breaking that cycle!
73, Paul
N4FTD