My boy scout troop recently went on a camp out to Alabaster Caverns state park in Freedom Oklahoma. I did a Parks on the Air activation while I was there! Here is how it went.
When we first arrived I got my tent set up and got settled in. Although I had planned to set up the antenna in the morning, I was bored and decided to set it up that night! It was the dipole that I always use, set up for 40 meters (7 MHz) Near Vertical Incidence. Below, is a picture of it shortly after setting it up.
Alabaster Caverns state park has a good camping area with enough flat ground that I was able to set it up using two wooden poles guyed out, with the dipole in between. I went to sleep that night and woke up in the morning ready to operate!
The activation
It was a beautiful morning that day, I woke up around 7:00 AM CST to this gorgeous sight!
When I did eventually get on the radio, I only got three contacts on 40 meters. The band was not quite in my favor that day. We then went on a tour of the caverns which were very cool!
When I returned from the caverns, I changed the dipole to be used on 20 meters (14 MHz) and got right back to it. I got 17 more contacts on 20 meters! This was great because it made this my most successful POTA activation so far!
I have a goal to activate every POTA site in Oklahoma, and with this activation it brings my total to a mere 2/193 parks. This will hopefully be changing soon though! I plan to get out and operate as much as possible.
If you are interested in my amateur radio adventures then check out the rest of my blog where I will be documenting most of these activations, and more! Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day!