Lately, most weekends have been rainy around here. The forecast for tomorrow is much better than the rain today. Unfortunately, family obligations gave me no choice than to activate today.
I headed over to Marsh Creek State Park (US-1380, KFF-1380) early this morning, to avoid heavier rain later in the day. Despite the lousy weather, there were a lot of cars in the parking lot.
The rig today was my usual Penntek TR-35 (5 watts, CW) and my 12-foot loaded whip. As is my usual practice, I started on 40M. The band predictions forecasted poor daytime conditions on 40M, but that wasn’t my experience. Although some of the signal reports I received were lower than usual, I logged my first 10 contacts in about 13 minutes. My first contact was in Georgia, so that’s not too bad for 40M. The 30M band also seemed to be in decent shape.
When I moved up to 20M, I found some annoying broadband noise across the band. I’ve never encountered that here before, so I was wondering if there was a hybrid vehicle or something in the parking lot. I skipped 20M and moved up to 17M. The band was nearly devoid of activity, and 15 minutes of CQing failed to produce a single contact. While I was CQing, though, I passed the time by watching a large heron wading by. I went back to 40M to finish up.
My final tally was 32 contacts, three of which were park-to-park. I didn’t have any DX contacts this morning, but there were some highlights:
- I had park-to-park contacts with KD8IE on two bands.
- I worked my friend Frank N3FLL. I talked to Frank on a local repeater on my way to the park and gave him a heads-up. He found me on 40M.
- I worked Al N3KAE on 40M. Al is the Regional Coordinator who uploads my WWFF logs for me. It was great to add him to the log.
My setup withstood the rain pretty well this morning. I used a piece of pipe insulation on the passenger side window, where I fed the coax through. The fit could have been better, but it kept the rain out. Once again, I used a plastic bag to protect my homebrew coil. When I took the antenna down, I used a chamois cloth to dry the whip as I collapsed it. That worked pretty well.
Hopefully, we’ll have a rain-free weekend one of these days.
73, Craig WB3GCK
WB3GCK QRP Amateur Radio 