The weather prognosticators were forecasting snow and rain to start Saturday afternoon. So, I headed out for a quick activation before the weather nastiness arrived. I hadn’t activated French Creek State Park (US-1355, KFF-1355) in quite some time, so I packed up my radio gear and headed out.
The place was nearly empty when I arrived. I parked near the boat launch at Hopewell Lake today and was set up a few minutes later. My rig today was my KX3 (5W, CW), along with my usual 12-foot whip and homebrew loading coil.
There were several things working against me this morning. We were in the midst of a minor geomagnetic storm, and there was a good deal of static presumably from the impending weather. There was also a DX contest going, so some bands were loaded with contesters. I stayed mostly on the WARC bands, to avoid the contest mayhem.
The most concerning thing was that the ATU in my KX3 was a little finicky finding a match on some of the higher bands. I’m not sure if it’s a faulty connection or if something is going on. Regardless, I got a good enough match to continue operating.
I started out on 40M, and despite the band conditions, it only took about 12 minutes to log my first 10 contacts. When things slowed down, I moved to 30M for a while, followed by 17M and 12M. After making a couple of DX contacts on 12M, the KX3 decided it didn’t like the antenna and folded back to three watts. That was a little over an hour after I started, so I decided that was a good time to pack up and head home.
I ended up with 33 contacts with two known park-to-parks. The 17 and 12 meter bands produced five European contacts: F5MQU, OH1MM, F1BLL, SM4BNZ, and IK4IDF. A special tip of the hat to N0TOP in Missouri who worked me on three bands this morning.
So despite all the wackiness going on, it was a good morning. I have a little equipment troubleshooting to do, though.
72, Craig WB3GCK
WB3GCK QRP Amateur Radio 