Kanaskat Palmer State Park (US-3209)

Looking at my stats on the POTA website, I saw that I need three new activations to hit the next level of activator award. I am fairly resolved to try to hit that before the end of the year, so I reasoned that I could perhaps tag both Kanaskat Palmer State Park and Flaming Geyser State Park in one day, and I headed out to do just that. Both parks are hobbled by a lack of cell service, so I took the time to schedule an activation for Kanaskat Palmer SP before I headed out.

Setup

There are lots of possible activation sites at Kanaskat Palmer.

Unsurprisingly (but frustratingly) the picnic/day use areas of the park are all situated close to the river, which makes them seem unhelpful from a radio propagation point of view, because they’re all down at the lowest elevation and surrounded by hills. None of the designated day use/picnic areas have anything like decent cellular service.

I suspect that the spot that might be used for an activation that has decent cell service would be the campground, but of course even in winter the campground is awash in RFI generating stuff.

In the end I selected a cluster of picnic tables surrounding a picnic shelter at the southern end of the northernmost day use area, which was proximate to parking and the toilet facilities.

My plan from the start was to use the Tufteln EFRW with 41’ radiating element, held up by the 10m POTA Explorer mast. Considerable time was spent dorking around with ways to hold the mast upright; in the end, I put one clamp on the table, another clamp on the seat, and with velcro straps held the pole in place more or less vertically. I suspect in the end a faster way to hold the mast upright at a picnic table would be to jam the drive-on mast mount under one of the table legs, so I’ll give that a try next time.

The resulting lashup is surprisingly low profile; the mast is black and disappears at a distance, and the antenna wire itself is black, thin, and essentially invisible at any distance greater than about a foot. Only the high-vis coax gave any clue that something was out there, so this is not a setup to be used for any area where traffic is possible.

One thing where my inexperience with this setup really showed was that I set the mast up much too far away from the operating position, with the result that I actually needed the 50’ coax to reach the feedpoint of the antenna, which was resting (probably a very bad idea) on top of one of the barbecue grills.

Hopefully some experience with the EFRW antenna and the mast will produce a setup time much closer to using the very familiar Chelegance MC-750, which I can put up in two minutes.

The picnic table was in rough shape, and I should probably consider something to give a clean work surface (some sort of roll up mat?).

SSB

With no good way to spot myself other than using the InReach, I just did the entire activation using CW.

CW

Because I’ve never activated this park, I wanted to hit as many bands as reasonably possible. My plan was to run through the bands, 10m through at least 20m, in order.

I suspected that 20m would give me the best chance at a lot of contacts, but a bit later in the day than my start time, so I started on 10m.

I got the first caller on 10m at 2048Z, and 23 minutes of calling CQ netted me 9 contacts. I should probably have moved on to 12m a bit more quickly!

Moving to 12m, 4 minutes of calling got me 3 callers and then a dry spell.

When I moved to 15m, I had callers almost immediately, and got 5 callers in 5 minutes.

At this point I was keeping an eye on the clock, because I still wanted to wrap things up and move on to Flaming Geyser SP to do an activation there.

9 minutes of calling netted me 3 contacts on 17m.

And then 12 minutes on 20m netted me 10 contacts.

At that point it was past 2pm local time, and I realized if I wanted to do an activation, I needed to get a move on. I still had callers when I sent QRT, which made me sad.

Flaming Geyser SP

I hustled over to Flaming Geyser SP, where I spent far too much time trying to find a decent spot to set up, made a choice, set up the MC-750 in a rush, and realized I was very tight on time to get the activation done, even on 20m. In the end I just took it all down, packed it up, and headed home, so Flaming Geyser SP will remain on my To Be Activated list.

One thing I did do after leaving Kanaskat Palmer SP was stop in a spot that had cell service and delete the scheduled activation of Kanaskat Palmer SP and create a new one for Flaming Geyser SP, so that when I was spotted it would be posted to the POTA website spotting page. That seems to work fine, so that’s good news.

Box Score

Total QSOs: 30
Total CW QSOs: 30
Time spent operating: 1.3 hours plus setup and teardown
Solo CW bonus points: 30
Pleasant weather bonus: 5
Favorite Picnic Table points: na

Things lost: 0
Things broken: 0
Equipment frustration time: 20 minutes being inefficient with telescoping mast
Vital gear not included in loadout: 0

Final Fun-O-Meter^(tm) reading: 8.5