POTA Activation of K-0213 Maud Williamson State Recreation Area
8 Februrary 2024
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Last week I decided that I needed a break from sitting at the PC and workbench and had to get out, touch grass, and work some CW POTA. I’ve only done two previous POTA activations, and they were fairly minimal affairs, with only a handful of CW QSOs on each, with the remainder being SSB. Since I’m on a renewed kick to level up my CW skills, I really want to focus on solely operating CW for my POTA ops for the foreseeable future.
There aren’t a ton of POTA-eligible parks in my immediate vicinity but fortunately I don’t have to travel too far to get to the nearest one. Maud Williamson State Recreation Area is only about a 15-minute drive down the eastern slope of the Eola Hills toward the Willamette Valley (everything is at least a 15-minute drive from here, so this really is about as close as it gets). This is a modest day use park on OR Highway 221 between Salem and Dayton, close to the Willamette River (and the Wheatland Ferry) that has a covered pavilion and some picnic table areas.
Equipment List
Icom IC-705
Gabil Radio GRA-7350T Portable Base-Loaded Vertical Antenna (with four 16-foot silicone ground radial wires)
Gabil Radio GRA-M105 Manpack Collapsible Whip Antenna
Gabil Radio GRA-ULT01 MK3 Antenna Mount Tripod
CW Morse Blue Pocket Double Paddle Morse Code Key
Bioenno BLF-12045W 4.5 Ah LiFePO4 Battery
RigExpert AA-35 Zoom
Long wire antennae that require a single end mounted high, such as a end-fed half-wave or end-fed random wires are popular in portable ops for a very good reason, but I’ve been leaning toward the base-loaded ground-mounted vertical antenna specifically for POTA ops for a very pragmatic reason: no lines in trees or stakes in the ground are required. I’ve been considering this factor for a little while as I work on building my POTA load-out, but recently Thomas K4SWL published a post on his excellent qrper.com blog that lays out a very good reason avoiding these things: potential park rules violations and keeping good relations with the park staff and the rest of the public who are visiting. Running an antenna setup such as the Gabil GRA-7350T with the matching tripod is one of the most low-impact ways to deploy an antenna, and should run afoul of no rules violations.
I use yellow silicone ground radial wire for good visibility, as well as its soft and flexible nature. The GRA-7350T comes with an telescoping whip, which works fine and collapses into a very small length, but seems slightly fragile. I recently saw on HOA Ham that Gabil released a “manpack” whip that’s compatible with the GRA-7350T that uses shock-corded sections instead of a telescoping design, which certainly looks quite a bit more rugged. I ordered one right away and this activation was my first time trying it out. I want to commend Gabil for the overall quality of this antenna system, especially the tripod, which so far has been quite sturdy and has no problem supporting the matching antenna system securely.
As I was setting up the antenna, I heard a huge ruckus in a field adjacent to the park. It turned out that a massive number of Canada geese, probably on the order of 1000, decided to leave and let everyone know about it. This video is only a portion of them:
In my experience with the GRA-7350T, tuning can be a little finicky but it’s fairly easy to do with an antenna analyzer like the AA-35 Zoom. Today however, I was struggling mightily to get a match. At first I thought it could have been because of my new whip, but the problem turned out to be intermittent, which lead me to believe I had faulty coax on my hands. I freaked out a little, because I thought I only had one piece of coax cable in my pack, but it turned out that I had a RG-174 jumper in the bottom of my pack that was probably 6 feet long, just enough to use if I dragged the Gabil vertical right next to the picnic table I was going to operate on. After swapping out the feedline, the antenna tuned up exactly as I expected. Whew. As they say on Ham Radio Workbench, two is one and one is none. It pays to keep a spare feedline.
Once the antenna issues were sorted, the actual activation was fairly smooth. Instead of using the IC-705’s built-in CW keyer, I put the radio in straight key mode and used my EtherKeyer Mini prototype for keying functions. I programmed message memory 2 with a POTA CQ message, which made my operation a lot easier than even using the 705’s keyer, since I could use more of the display on the 705 without the keyer menu taking up half of the screen, not to mention the advantage of having a tactile button to use over a touchscreen.
Once I got picked up by RBN, the QSOs came at a fairly steady pace, but I never really had any pileups, which was actually a relief to me as I’m still kind of unfamiliar with this “being the DX” thing. I started a little shaky, not really having a good rhythm for being a CW POTA activator, but by the middle of the activation I was beginning to find my groove. Shortly after that, I had someone start operating another POTA activation right on my frequency, and I had people calling…someone…not sure if me or the other station. Rather than try to figure that out, I moved down a few kilohertz onto a frequency ending in 0.5 kHz to hopefully lessen the chance of that happening again. I managed to snag some more QSOs before deciding that it was time to call QRT so that I could be back to my boys’ school in time to pick them up.
In the end, I logged 25 QSOs in about an hour. I’m sure I could do better as I improve my CW skills, but that doesn’t seem too bad. Even though I’m still a bit rough at CW (I was never super-fluent nor super-active, so I’m not really that far gone from when I was last regularly on the air) I found that I was getting a bit more comfortable with the QSO flow by the end of the activation. I believe my EtherKeyer Mini was set for 17 WPM (I still need to implement readout via piezo buzzer) and my keying was serviceable but not perfect by any means. Most ops contacting me were at a similar speed, but there were a few that I estimate were closer to 25 WPM, but I was able to copy their exchanges pretty well. Over all, a satisfying and successful afternoon, to be sure.
What’s Next
There’s still a fair bit of work and validation to do on the changes to the Front Panel PCB, so I’ll be grinding on that for the next few weeks. As mentioned previously, I also need to troubleshoot the Party Line 80 prototype keying, so that I can start making some QSOs with that, so I’ll probably break up work on the Front Panel with some work on that. If there are any of you who would also like to beta test EtherKeyer Mini, get in touch and I can send one your way!