Rainy Camping at French Creek

The (far) better half and I took the trailer back to French Creek State Park (US-1355, KFF-1355) for a weekend of camping. We were hoping for some nice weather, but Mother Nature had other plans in mind. Not only was the terrestrial weather bad, the solar weather wasn’t much better at times. 

It was dry when we arrived and got set up. After getting the camper squared away, I set up my usual 29.5-foot vertical wire and 9:1 unun. To avoid creating a trip hazard with my coax, I set up the antenna back in the woods behind the trailer. Not long after I got the antenna set up, the rain started. I set up my KX3 in the trailer and gave my portable station a quick test. The antenna loaded up easily as it normally does, but I couldn’t hear any signals whatsoever. I checked my connections, and everything looked good. Checking my band conditions app, I saw there was a major geomagnetic storm in progress. So, I shut the radio down and hoped for better conditions the next day. 

On Saturday morning, I woke up to rain showers and unsettled geomagnetic conditions. I got on the radio while brewing some coffee on the stove. The site we were on had electric hookups, so the trailer’s 12 volt converter was generating a ton of noise on the bands. To get around the noise, I shut off the main breaker and ran the lights on the trailer’s battery. The bands were plagued with static from storms in the area, but I still managed 10 contacts on 40M. A few of them were challenging, to say the least. 

The rainy weather put a damper on my plans for operating outdoors—and all of our outdoor plans for that matter. So, later that afternoon, we had to hunker down in the camper. The (far) better half read her book, while I gave the radio another try. This time around, the band conditions were a little better. I logged another 10 contacts on 20M, before stopping for dinner.

Just after midnight UTC, I gave 40M another go. Boy, were things different this time. I quickly made 16 contacts. Just for the heck of it, I dropped down to 80M and picked up one more before shutting down for the day. 

We had some torrential downpours overnight. I know this because the heavy rain actually woke me up at 3am. Having tent camped for many years, I know what the nearby tent campers had probably experienced with this storm. 

By Sunday morning, the rain tapered off to intermittent showers. We decided to head home early, so I got on the radio for a bit before packing up. I made a few more contacts before packing up the radio gear. I finished the weekend with ‌42 contacts (plus one dupe) including a bunch of park-to-park contacts. 

It wasn’t the weekend we had hoped for, but we had still had a quiet, relaxing time. I hope all the dads out there had a great Father’s Day. 

I’ll be spending some time in the coming weeks getting ready for Field Day (June 28-29). My current plan is to operate with the Boschveldt QRP Club (W3BQC). If you work us on CW, it will probably be me on the other end.

72, Craig WB3GCK