Having recently returned to the ham radio fold after over a decade of being off the air, I was surprised to discover how popular Parks on the Air has become. Surprised and, well, thrilled about the huge boost it seems to be having on CW (morse code) operation. I was completely against getting rid of the code requirement on the license exams for fear it would lead to the demise of CW, so hearing so many POTA stations calling CQ when I put my home QTH back on the air was gratifying…and intriguing.

I have a vague recollection that I knew about Parks on the Air when I was last on the air back around 2014, and I believe I worked at least one POTA station back then, but compared to now, it was a very tiny part of the hobby. I’ve been enjoying hunting from the home QTH and contacting POTA activators but haven’t had the experience of participating in a park activation before today. I don’t currently have portable gear appropriate for POTA work, but my brother Mike, AE7XI recently dug out an IC-7000 from storage, bought some batteries and a Pactenna, and yesterday did his first activation from US-3166 Bridle Trails park near his home in Woodinville. So when this morning he suggested I join him on another activation, I readily agreed.

I checked the main POTA site and found the nearest eligible park to my place was Panther Lake, a small Department of Fish and Wildlife stocked fishing lake with a public boat launch, (US-13442 for Parks on the Air).

Panther Lake on POTA map
Checking the POTA map for nearby parks

Mike showed up at my place as I was loading the car with a couple camp chairs, a six foot folding table, and water for Bridgette, our Golden Retriever who was going to join us for the activation. He grabbed his POTA gear bag and we hopped in the car and headed for Panther Lake. I knew the area well from having biked up and down Three Lakes Road many times over the years, but had never actually been to Panther Lake in my 26 years living in Monroe. One of the things that really appeals to me about POTA, similar to Geocaching back in the day, is that it gives you a reason to explore your local area and get out to places that you might not normally think to go.

We followed the signs to the boat launch, heading up a gravel road into the cool shade of the woods and arriving at a small parking area, with the road continuing a short ways further down to the boat launch itself. It was a beautiful, sunny day in the mid-70s and we pulled up next to the boat launch, unloaded the gear, and setup the picnic table and chairs on a nice shady spot under some cedar trees to the right of the boat launch.

Arriving at the Lake
The parking area above the lake
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A nice shady area to operate from on the right side of the lake

The first order of business was getting the antenna up in the air. The Pactenna Mike brought for operating on 20 meters is extremely thin and light, so even very small branches would do the job. The first couple attempts at tossing the arborist throw bag attached to paracord and raising the antenna were not successful as the antenna wire was caught under some branches. Mike determined throwing from the lake side was a better bet, and on the third attempt he had the antenna hoisted and I secured the feedpoint to a small branch on a nearby cedar.

The coax feedline was a bit short for where we had setup the table, so we turned it 180 degrees and then had plenty of slack to work with. Mike fired up the IC-7000 and tested his portable key. Instead of sending a clean set of dits, it was sending dit-dah, dit-dah, dit-dah. After a bit of troubleshooting, Mike determined that the key jack wasn’t fully seated, after which it sent as expected. Time to make some contacts!

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Mike works on getting the Pactenna deployed
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Raising the feedpoint up a bit
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Lily pads in the shade of the cedar trees

Mike tuned to 14.056 Mhz and sent his first CQ right around 16:00 PST / 23:00 UTC, running 50 watts power. I was on the POTA app on my phone trying to spot him (let others know he was operating from Panther Lake) but his first call was immediately answered by K0OV in California who gave a strong 599 signal report. A few more contacts came in quick succession, then we hit a lull of about 10 minutes with Mike calling CQ but no responses. The contacts came in waves though, with the lull suddenly broken by several contacts coming back in a row. A few times the location of the contact wasn’t clear and Mike came back with “QTH?” but either the other station didn’t know the Q-code for location or didn’t catch it, because they never came back with their location, in one case just re-sending the signal report. I looked those contacts up on QRZ and it was all good.

During the lulls Mike tuned up and down the band and made a couple contacts by answering another station’s CQ, including at least one “Park to Park” contact where the other station was also doing a POTA activiation from a different park.

For a while I took over logging so Mike could focus on sending, and did a decent job on my CW copy, with only a couple corrections that Mike had to make. Mostly though when he called out the other station’s callsign, I had written it down correctly. My CW copy speed is pretty rusty, and I’m looking forward to getting it higher. POTA seems like a great way to practice!

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Mike AE7XI in the operating position
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Paper logging kept the gear needs nice and simple

We even got some DX! A couple stations from Canada (Ontario and Newfoundland) and even Spain (EA1DD), nice strong signals. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting that little Pactenna and 50W to work Spain on this activation. You just never know when the bands are going to open up.

Mike AE7XI calling CQ POTA from Panther Lake.

A family launching their boat expressed curiosity about what we were up to and the dad was explaining to his young kids about ham radio and how you can talk all over the world. Other families were wading and swimming off the boat launch; the noise of squealing kids and CW in the warm summer evening air just felt like a perfect ham radio experience.

Mike easily blew past the minium 10 contacts needed for the activation, winding up with a solid 17. We were both surprised to learn he bagged all 17 in under an hour; Bridle Trails was much slower, taking a couple hours to get the needed number of contacts. After a few more unanswered CQs around 17:00 we decided to call it a successful activation and began packing up. For me, it felt like the perfect introduction to POTA activations and I am eager to outfit myself with some appropriate kit and get out and start activating with my call.