As always there are lots of links within the article. Click one! Click them all! Learn all the things! ?
Ahhh .. few things in life compare to the view one sees while lakeside in the mountains. The flat water is a stark contrast to the towering mountains nearby. There is at least a 4000′ difference in height between the two at my destination in this story. For me, nothing so succinctly tells me where I fit in the world as when I stand among these giants.
So It was with that big goal in mind that a drive through the mountains of Alberta’s Kananaskis Country region was called for. The drive would take me through sweeping vistas, over high mountain road passes, along nearly 100km of gravel roads in no-cell-service backcountry while racking up nearly 400km of travel in one day.
Along the way I activated two never-before done parks in the POTA system and scouted out one more to be done at a future date. This is the story of the lakeside activation… but first, watch the short video to understand why I’m gushing on the beauty of this particular spot and written this atypical (for me) article about the activation itself.
The Drive to the activation
Overview of the trip. Darker lines indicate gravel roads. First activation is along the westernmost gravel road along the lakeshore.
For those of you that want to replicate this trip, here’s the route I took shown on the map above.
From just before when I turned north off Highway 541 to Highway 40, and until I reached Canmore, there is zero cell service. Same again turning onto Highway 68 from 40 until Bragg Creek.
Alberta has much backcountry that is well beyond cellular range. Working at The Candy Store(tm) as I do, I have access to items like the Zoleo Satellite Communicator to give me text messaging and SOS capabilities should I need them. Before I discovered SOTAmat, I used the Zoleo for all of my spotting in backcountry.
My good friend, Wlod (US7IGN), sent me the following message recently and has kindly allowed me to share it here on QRPer:
Hi Thomas,
I was going to write to you too. I saw your posts on QRPer.com about QRP field kits and decided to share my collection of QRP radios, which I keep now. One of them is my homemade one.
I called it PFR-5 because it has 5 bands, unlike original PFR-3, which was taken as a basis.
The rest are my friends’ radios that I’m temporarily storing. Tulip/Tulipan SDR from SP3OSJ, ELECRAFT KX3, and copy of Mountain Topper and original PFR-3.
I did not compare them, because this needs to be done outside the city where there is no noise and you can evaluate their RX performance, which I cannot do now for obvious reason.
Have a good day!
—
73 de US7IGN!
Thant’s brilliant, Wlod! I think you may have the only PFR-5 in the world! Ha ha! I love how you marked it as the “Ukrainian Edition” and gave it that brilliant image on the front face.
Thanks for sharing with us, OM! I dream of the day you can take these radios to the field and give them a proper comparison.
I shared this on Mastodon and Twitter, but I wanted to share it here on QRPer.com too because, frankly, it made me feel proud to be a CW operator.
While making dinner, I turned on the Mission RGO One and started hunting POTA and SOTA stations.
I tuned to 7044 kHz and heard a POTA activator moving along at a slow, but steady pace with a straight key. He was doing a great job and working through exchanges. I checked his profile on the POTA website and discovered that this was likely his first CW activation.
After he finished his exchange, I called him and he answered. We moved through the whole exchange and he did a fantastic job despite a noisy band.
Here’s what got me…
When he finished our contact and sent 73 with the customary “dit dit,” a large pileup of hunters started calling him all at his slower cadence! It was brilliant!
A huge group of CW hunters wanting to make contact with this fellow, all matched to his speed!
If you’re a new CW activator, don’t worry. We obviously all have your back!
As always there are lots of links within the article. Click one! Click them all! Learn all the things! 🙂
The backstory
For those of us that work from home there are good and not-so-good things about it. One of the not-so-good things is that I’m not getting out somewhere every day like I used to, thus I embrace corporate travel as it represents a mini-escape from the day-to-day activities that would normally happen. It also gives me an opportunity to operate in the field and away from the comfort of sites nearby my home.
In late September I was in the Edmonton Alberta area for work and, as always, I brought along a set of gear to play radio. Where I’d normally drive up and park my F-350 within the boundaries of the park and operate from the cab of the truck, this time I was in a rental vehicle so I had to be well-equipped for the unknowns. I also didn’t pre-plan my stops like I normally would, I just wanted to roll up and do my best to make it work.
Not really pre-planning an activation is a stark contrast to how I normally roll as I usually pore over maps and satellite views on multiple websites to visualize where the park entrance is and where I’ll set myself and what I may encounter for surroundings when I get there. I know exactly where I’m going and just about down to the parking space. I build a set of kit up to support that/those activation/s.
With the lovely autumn weather we were experiencing in Alberta, my plan was to activate after work opportunistically around Edmonton – something I’d not yet done despite many trips to the area – and set up and operate right around 0000z. This time is after my workday, so a nice mental break from the day’s activities before kicking back for the evening. I think to my self that I’ll roll into a site nearest to where I was working arriving just before midnight UTC (1800h local) and get set up and start calling once the clock ticked over into a new day. From there I would then head to the hotel (or home) and grab a bite to eat and close my day off on a high note.
As I often do, I hunted yet another CW POTA activator during my lunch break while working from home.
I have been learning CW for most of the year. Early on, I realized that with a bit of practice sending, and after listening to recordings of POTA activations, like those from Thomas, I could reliably send the proper exchange needed to hunt a POTA activator.
If you can give your call sign, signal report, and state abbreviation, you can make the contact. I started early on with just the basics and then added some of the common “extras” like GM for good morning, TU for Thank You and then 73. Not only is this great practice for getting on the air sending CW, it’s also very rewarding while learning CW. The exchange is short, standard, and easy to follow with a bit of practice.
CW Practice with the Morserino32 and a Cup of Coffee
Once I finished my upgrade to Extra I focused all my spare time, not much though truth be told, on practicing CW.
At some point this summer I set the goal to Activate POTA/SOTA during the W4G SOTA campout this fall. This really wasn’t an aggressive goal, one I figured was attainable but also one that I could hold myself accountable to even knowing I had a very busy summer ahead of me.
W4G SOTA Campout Summit View Yanah Mountain Bald October 2022
During one of the LICW Club classes I heard again that their goal is to get Hams on the air to make a QSO. I thought to myself, yes, that is great, and I want to do more, but I know I have made many QSOs in CW on the air, albeit very short and simple ones. So, I was curious how many.
I jumped on the POTA site and looked up my statistics. I was surprised at how may hundred I had, and yet at the same time, I was a bit disappointed. It’s not that I wanted to have made more CW contacts, it’s that I realized that they were ALL from hunting and not a single one was from calling CQ.
So, I changed my goal.
I know that Hams, especially CW operators, are a great bunch of people and they want to see new CW operators succeed, so there is lots of patience when you call CQ. So, I decided to move up my timeline. This was on a Thursday, and Saturday was a likely candidate for a POTA outing, why not–?
Saturday was my birthday, and I knew I could get away with some personal free time in the morning where I could dive in and call CQ POTA DE N5FY. The next day, Friday, I firmed it up, I would head out in the morning, bring the new to me KX2 and see what happens.
Surprisingly, I was much less nervous than I expected, I had told myself that it wouldn’t help anyways to be nervous so just do it and see what happens. I made it to my local park, to the picnic table I frequent, then setup a No Transformer 2-Wire antenna with the KX2. One press of the ATU button and I had a 1:1 match on 40m band.
Of course, I have great timing. I could not believe the stations on the air on 40m. I never did look but there must have been a contest. I moved up and down about 20kHz and there were stations everywhere! I called “QRL?” on 2 different frequencies and had a reply before I landed on open frequency where I could call CQ.
N5FY First CW Activation KX2 Setup
I had not scheduled the activation; I knew I had a bit of cell phone coverage at this park, so I set the CQ POTA message to calling while I posted a spot.
After two calls, I had my first call back. It was time!
I could have freaked out here, but I was too focused on decoding to even be nervous! Of course, I had to send a partial call and a “?” once or twice to get the full call right. Of course, I made some keying errors. But the caller had patience and worked me and we made the QSO. Now I was really excited!
I called CQ and someone sent me back dits and dahs, and I decoded what they were sending! Boy, this was fun! I continued to call CQ POTA, and tried my best to decode the replies, several pileups, and lots of “?” sent by me. But I was making contacts and having a blast!
After a couple of silent CQ calls later, I switched to 20m. And, again, started to get replies back as well as a couple small pileups. In the end, there were a couple call signs that I could not look up, l had a letter or two wrong, but with almost 20 in the log I knew I had an activation and boy was I happy!
N5FY First CW Activation QSO Map
Looking back on the activation, and after talking to another Ham, it occurred to me why I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I might be.
You see, when you are the Activator, when you call CQ, the ball is in your court, you invite people to call back and they are there for you. I almost get more nervous hunting as I don’t want to slow down an activator or run over another caller. But when you are the one calling CQ, it’s your game!
Of course there were several hiccups along the way. For one, it got HOT sitting in the sun. I ended up deploying my hiking chair on the table as a sunshade and pulled a portable fan out of the car. Even the action camera overheated while recording the activation. I couldn’t get the KXPD2 paddle to key the KX2 on 20m when I first got setup. And of course, I had lots of sending errors (although fewer than I expected to have) and sent a A LOT of “?” asking for a repeat.
That said, I am very glad to have jumped in and will continue to activate CW going forward as I continue to build my CW skills. For me, confidence in the ability to Activate on CW is great motivation for practicing, which again, is my biggest learning. If I want to be a good operator, I need to put in the effort, and going out to play radio is one extremely fun way to practice!
Many thanks to Alan (W2AEW) who shares the following guest post:
Radioactive vacation on LBI (Long Beach Island)
by Alan (W2AEW)
We look forward every August to our much needed 2 week vacation “down the shore” as we say here in New Jersey. Our vacation spot of choice is Long Beach Island, one of the barrier islands on the Jersey coast. This is an 18 mile long island that hugs the Atlantic coast of southern NJ, just north of Atlantic City. The part of the island we love to stay in is called Surf City. The Surf City area has been continually populated since 1690, although the town of Surf City was officially established in the late 1800s.
The XYL and I are both pretty fair skinned, so laying out on the beautiful LBI beaches everyday isn’t really our thing.
So, the house we rent is actually on the bay side, facing west, overlooking the Manahawkin Bay. We enjoy sitting back and watching (and occasionally participating in) the wide variety of activities on the bay – the fishing & crabbing, the power boats, personal watercraft, paddle boarding, sailing, etc. Our favorite though, and the thing that keeps us coming back every year, are the awesome sunsets over the bay.
Of course, we always need to find a house that is pet friendly. Sophie loves LBI also, especially the long walks around town with the sea breeze. Here she is waiting at the top of the stairs – hoping to hear the magical word…. “walk”…
LBI is certainly a family and pet friendly place. Even the local Dunkin Donuts has a wall dedicated to the local pets:
I certainly planned to do a fair amount of QRP operating while on vacation – both from the rental house as well as POTA from the nearby parks (more about this soon). But lest you think this was purely a radioactive vacation, let me reassure you that we did a lot of “normal” vacation activities too.
Like most, a lot of vacation is about relaxing, eating, other stress relieving activities, eating, shopping, and of course, eating… Breakfasts were typically some homebaked muffins, or even some fresh biscuits from the oven with some great Black Bear Jam – a gift from a good friend in NC. Yummy!
The main meals were a mix of good ‘ole home cooking and some great local cuisine, including great Jersey pizza from Panzone’s, fresh local seafood from Mud City Crab House and Pinky Shrimp’s Seafood Company. Of course, no trip to LBI is complete without getting some of the best burgers in the state from Woodies Drive In in Ship Bottom, right next to Flamingo Mini-Golf – one of *many* mini-golf places on the island. I’ve personally seen Ray Romano golfing at Flamingo with his family.
I did manage to do some other “normal” vacation activities besides radio… A couple of relaxing afternoons on the beach, completed a 1000 pc jigsaw puzzle, read two James Patterson novels, lounging on the decks overlooking the bay and lots of strolls with the XYL and the dog.
But who’s kidding who, this is a QRP blog right! Let’s get radioactive!
One of the first tasks after unpacking was setting up the antenna at the rental house. The location was great, right next to the bay! I strapped my slip-fit military fiberglass poles to the corner post of the 2nd floor deck, which made a great support for the 40m EFHW wire. This is the same UNUN & antenna that I featured in a “build” video a few years ago. Continue reading Alan’s Long Beach Island Radioactive Vacation!→
Many thanks to Dale (N3HXZ) who shares the following guest post:
SOTA and POTA in the San Juan Islands
by Dale Ostergaard (N3HXZ)
My wife and I like to take educational tour vacations from time to time. The outfit we mostly use is Road Scholar.
The tours are geared around education and immersion in local cultures and experiences. In addition, you meet a lot of like-minded people on the tour and make new friends. Last summer we wanted to take a vacation to the pacific northwest. We had never been there and came across a tour through the San Juan Islands. The islands are located north of Seattle and east of Vancouver. Touring the islands is made easy on a guided tour as they arrange for all transportation between islands and on land.
Washington State has an excellent network of ferries serving the island which makes for easy connections to the islands.
After we booked the vacation I began wondering if there were SOTA and POTA opportunities on the islands. I quickly looked up sites on the SOTA Goat app and the POTA website. Low and behold there was a treasure trove of parks and summits!
SOTA MapPOTA Map
Realizing the opportunity, I cross checked our itinerary with the parks and summits. The difficulty of course is that when you are on a guided tour, you have very little flexibility in the schedule, let alone transportation to go off on your own. After researching, I found 4 opportunities that included 3 parks and 1 summit. The parks were K-0061 San Juan National Historic Park, K-3223 Lime Kiln Point State Park, both on the island of San Juan, and K-3232 Moran State Park and summit W7W/RS-065 Mount Constitution on Orcas Island. The Summit lies inside the park so I had the opportunity to grab both with 1 activation. Continue reading N3HXZ: SOTA and POTA in the San Juan Islands!→
Here is what I use for POTA activations to keep the key stable.
A clip board, carpet tape on the back to hold a carpet pad in place.
The Begali I put two slots in the clip board on either side of the traveler where then I could use a tie wrap to pull it secure to the board.
On the CW Morse I just used two screws with locking nuts to secure it to the board.
Your right hand holds the pencil while sending and your wrist weighs down on the clip board and I printed some POTA logs on excel to fit to the left of the key.
I hope this helps some of your readers with key movements. I now have my left hand to drink my coffee.
Steve W4JM
Clever and simple! I love it, Steve. Thanks for sharing!
Many thanks to Steve (MW0SAW) who shares the following field report:
Portable Ops in 9A Land
by Steve (MW0SAW)
Just back from a family holiday to Croatia and I was lucky enough to be able to take a QRP station with me on my travels. It’s always good to stop and review what you took and how it worked out, else you won’t be able to iterate and improve next time.
My wife and I have always been efficient minimalist travellers and even now with our daughter the traditional continues. And let’s face it, who doesn’t love to get their inner pack geek on when it comes to QRP ham radio and travel!
I’m very lucky to own several QRP radios, Elecraft KX2, FT-818, IC-705, but for minimalist ops they are all a/ too expensive and/or b/ too heavy & bulky. The choice naturally brought me to a CW rig and after some deliberating I chose my Venus SW-3B over my newly constructed QCX mini. The Venus is just more versatile having 3 bands and SSB RX.
So the item I spent weeks torturing myself about prior to the holiday was the antenna. You have to try to imagine from where you will operate. I don’t think you can beat a wire antenna like the K6ARK EFHW however you need trees or a mast, I thought I was most likely to operate from the hotel room balcony. I came to the conclusion, despite the extra bulk, that the Gabil 7350T and Tripod would be my companions.
And how did I get on? Well the first time I setup the station on the balcony the electrical interference was terrible, and I could not hear any signals. So I had to adapt and go for plan B. Which actually turned out to be a stunning spot.
Operating on a small jetty next to the salt water on the island of Sveti Nikola near the town of Porec in the early mornings, I deployed my station and called CQ. You can see from the RBN that my 5 watt signal was making a good impact, however only had a couple of European stations come back to me from my calls.
I decided to switch to hunt and pounce mode, and I was amazed to work several USA, VK and ZL stations over a few days. It’s such a great feeling to work DX with such a modest setup. The icing on the cake for an already special family holiday. I think you will agree such a beautiful place.
So overall I was very happy with my station choices.
Kit list:
(Note: Note that Amazon links are affiliate and support QRPer.com)
Until my next QRP adventure.
Best 73
Steve
9A/M0SAW (MW0SAW)
UPDATE:
I didn’t mention it in my report (above) as he hadn’t replied to my email, but I did work Peter Parker VK3YE (he has a good YouTube channel). I’m in his video about 10mins 45seconds in:
Here is a solution I came up with for the slipping issue with the Begali Traveler.
It’s very easy to push a pin through the (front only) plastic/rubber feet on the key. This will stop it from sliding on everything including formica counter tops.
After you push the pin through the plastic/rubber feet using a needle nose pliers, simply snip the sharp end off to leave it blunt.
You can leave the little ball on the other end of the pin to retract it if you wish, however, I’ve found that not to be necessary. —-I find that the pins really don’t snag on anything as they just barely peak out the bottom of the foot, but the option is there.
This makes for a rock solid hold on your surface and is a game changer. It’s so nice to be able to push away and not worry about the key slipping around.
Mike, K8MRD just did a review on the Traveler Lite and mentioned the slippage issue.
Best 73 Thomas and thank you for being a great image for the ham community.
Fred, KE8TBM
What a simple and effective idea! Thanks for sharing this tip with us, Fred. Also, thank you for the kind words, OM.
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