By Teri KO4WFP

January and February have been such busy months that not much POTA has happened for this POTA Babe since my trip to southwest Georgia. Wednesday, February 26th was too gorgeous a day to sit inside. I set aside my projects and Daisy and I headed to a new park – Mead Farm Wildlife Management Area (WMA).

Mead Farm WMA (US-9776) is a two-hour drive from Savannah, GA, my home QTH. I visited this area last year when I activated Yuchi WMA (US-3778) in January 2024. Within sight of Yuchi WMA is Plant Vogtle, a nuclear power plant on the Savannah River managed by Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company. I spied the four cooling towers (all complete and now active) in the distance during the drive.

Mead Farm is one of the smaller WMAs. It consists of 200 acres, almost equally split between uplands and wetlands. Unlike other Georgia WMAs I’ve visited, the roads back into the park were blocked so I opted to set up in the parking area. Thankfully, the road near the entrance to the park was not busy so vehicular noise didn’t present an impediment to my activation.

The weather in southern Georgia has been uncharacteristically warm – high temperatures in the upper 70s. With clear skies overhead, I parked on the eastern side of the parking area taking advantage of shade provided by pine trees. Those pines would also allow me to orient the Tufteln EFRW antenna toward the northwest.

POTA, at this point, has become comfortable. (Notice I didn’t say easy because you never know what unexpected event will happen during POTA as noted in my past QRPer.com articles.😉) In an effort to shake things up, I decided to use all three keys currently in my POTA kit: the VK3IL-design paddle gifted to me by Brian K3ES, the BaMaTech III paddle, and the CW Morse Pocket Single Paddle/Cootie key.

Once my antenna was installed, Daisy was comfortably lounging in the shade, and I was seated in my Helinox chair, it was time to have some fun! Continue reading The POTA Babe Shakes It Up →