A More Relaxed Activation of Lake Sammamish State Park (US-3216)
Presented with the possibility of a clear schedule in the afternoon I cleverly packed the day’s vital tasks into the AM with a goal of sloping off for a very relaxed afternoon enjoying the beautiful weather (clear skies, temps in the low 80’s F, and a gentle breeze) doing a somewhat more relaxed activation at some park to be chosen as I got in the car.
I piled the freshly charged KX2, the Chelegance MC-750, feedline, et al into the car and headed out into the sunshine not long after doing my PT exercises.
Heading down the driveway I concluded the weather called for a visit to Lake Sammamish State Park, where I was hoping for a cool breeze off the lake.
I arrived at the park at about 1pm PDT.
When I arrived I found a large party (at least three families) occupying the secluded area I like most for activations, so I chose a different spot, closer to the parking lot but under a large Big Leaf Maple that would provide shade for several hours as the shadow moved.
For comparison, the shamelessly stolen image that W8TP posted on Mastodon: 
Even more amusing, W8TP also deployed an MC-750 antenna, but it looks to me like he used the ground spike, and I used the little flat Chelegance tripod. As always when using the tripod I had some anxiety that the antenna would blow over, but so far (fingers crossed) this hasn’t happened - the antenna on the tripod is more stable than I would think given the fairly narrow leg spread of about two feet.
I had resolved to do the entire activation using the KX2, after some playing with VOACAP indicated to me that the difference between SSB at 20W and SSB at 10W is negligible. So in very short order I had the MC-750 set up, feedline run, and the KX2 and Begali Traveler Light set up with the laptop ready for logging. Cell service at this spot is reliable so the laptop was using my cellphone as a hotspot, which makes logging easier (HAMRS will confirm callsigns using QRZ) and also allows me to see when I’m spotted and to see the spots page if I decide to hunt park to park contacts (which I really enjoy, as it’s a bit of a challenge to compete with hunters running QRO with my KX2 running QRP)
Activation
I’m now a lot less anxious about starting activations with CW, and band conditions seemed pretty promising, so I found a clear frequency on 20M, spotted myself, and started calling CQ.
The first few callers made it clear my signal was getting out farther than I had expected, with calls from UT, MN, IL, NC,WV(!).
40 minutes of calling CQ and I had the ten contacts for a valid activation, including a QSO with W3OTZ, who very patiently gave me his call sign repeatedly until I got it right, and then gave me a signal report of 229. I will confess that although I find every QSO pretty exciting, I especially appreciate it when someone works me despite my signal being down so close to the noise that ESP is needed.
With the activation in the bag, I decided to experiment a bit, and rigged the MC-750 with the 40m coil and whip set for 30m, found a clear frequency, and started calling CQ. Ten minutes of calling CQ got me no takers, and a quick check on RBN showed I wasn’t really getting out very well (the only spots were in UT). In retrospect, it’s not clear to me that this wasn’t the dearth of stations spotting on 30m, as opposed to my signal just not getting out. (Playing with VOACAP suggests that 30m has real promise for covering much of the western US) In any case, I decided to give 17m a whirl, adjusted the antenna, and started calling CQ.
It took only a couple of minutes before I got a call from KG8CO in MI, but then things dried up completely.
At that point I decided to do a little park to park hunting, unsuccessfully on CW, and then with modest success on SSB. I could hear plenty of activators just fine, but it was tough sledding to break through any sort of pileup. I spent about an hour and 20 minutes hunting, and managed only four contacts (two in CA, one in CO, and one in QC) Hunting POTA while portable is definitely more fun than hunting POTA from the home shack, but doing it QRP sure does add to the challenge.
At this point, I was just about out of time and the bugs were driving me crazy, so I packed it all up and headed home for dinner.
All in all this was a much more relaxed activation for me, at least in part because my CW practice with RUFZXP is clearly improving my ability to capture callsigns. I’m still a very mediocre CW operator but I can see steady progress, and whatever I spend time practicing, I see improving. I definitely need to work on sending, as there were a couple of times where it took me an embarrassingly long time to correctly send a caller’s callsign. Time for more practice!
Box Score
Total QSOs: 15
Total CW QSOs: 12 (Yay!)
Time spent operating: ~2.5 hours
Battery drain on KX2: 1.27 AH Solo CW bonus points: 12 Pleasant weather bonus: 323 Favorite Picnic Table points: -10
Things lost: 1 (mind, when it took me four tries to correctly send a callsign)
Things broken: 0
Vital gear not included in loadout: 0
Final Fun-O-Metertm reading: 9.3
