This Tuesday (11/19/2024) I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go out and do a quick POTA activation at US-11222 (Stinchcomb Wildlife Refuge). I decided to do this because I just finished making a modification to my backpack to enable “manpack” style operation. Check out the attached pictures of this backpack.
The backpack
I can be ready to go by just throwing up an antenna and plugging in a few things! The whole pack only weighs about 15 pounds with water included. That way it isn’t too cumbersome to pack in somewhere. The most annoying part of my setup is the antenna I use.
Antennas
I use a Windcamp Gipsy and it’s great for POTA! It’s just a dipole, nothing too fancy about it. However it does take some time to set it up. In the future I plan to get a 17 foot whip and a tripod mount. This will add a few more pounds to the kit, but it will vastly improve the speed of which the antenna can be set up. Another good option could be an end fed dipole with a mast or telescopic fishing rod.
My POTA activation
Over the course of about 45 minutes I made 46 contacts! Previously my best POTA activation had been 20, so I was quite happy to say the least. The whole activation was done on the 20 meter band (specifically 14.345 MHz) I really enjoyed the small pileups I had. It definitely put my communication skills to the test!
Thank you to everyone that called in that day. I had a ton of fun!
If you are interested in my POTA adventures or my other amateur radio experiences please check out my blog Thanks for reading!