Redemption at Marckworth State Forest

Having narrowly avoided a ‘invalid’ activation attempt at Lake Sammamish SP when I inadvertently had a QSO fall into a new UTC day, I was feeling a need to redeem my failed activation at Marckworth SF which is just a short distance from my home, by getting a valid activation there.

Cell service is spotty in the area of Marckworth SF that’s easiest to access from my home. That’s kept me from trying to activate it again.

There are ways around this - I could spot myself using a Garmin Inreach to send messages to Sotamat, for instance, or perhaps use APRS. In the end, I decided those tactics were better used for the first time where I actually had cell service and could see if they were successful.

In the end, though, I decided to try out the ability of scheduling the activation, and then letting the Reverse Beacon network see my signal, and forward the spot on to Pota.app. This meant I’d be doing a CW only activation. Up until now, I was never confident enough in my CW abilities to arrange an activation using CW and not relying on having SSB or FT8/FT4 as a backup plan.

But just recently I did a CW only activation of Lake Sammamish SP where I did 44 QSOs in just under two hours. I’ve come a long way since that first use of CW in an activation, where my cousin and good friend K7ZOO helped me through 8 CW QSOs to activate Brandywine Creek SP.

So off I trundled to Marckworth SF, KX2 bag in hand.

Setup

There are no picnic areas in Marckworth SF, so I didn’t have an option of using a picnic table. I considered working from inside the car, but as time goes on I’m more inclined to avoid that, so instead I brought my Travelchair table and chair, and set them up behind the car, with the Chelegance MC-750 on the tripod a short distance away from the car.

The location I picked was a short turnout that led to gate. I reasoned that with the gate locked, there was little risk I’d be interrupted by traffic going past.

Sadly, I did not erect the Kelty Sidekick shelter - there was no rain in the forecast and I was hoping to do a fairly quick activation, so I took a risk, and lost, as I had to tear everything down in a hurry when a light rain started to fall. The kicker is that with my chair and table set up directly behind the car, it would have been a perfect test for the Sidekick.

SSB

There was no SSB or digital portion to this activation.

CW

Before heading out to the SF, I scheduled the activation on POTA.app. Having done that, all I needed was for the RBN to spot my signal and pass the spot on to POTA.app, and I’d be in business.

Because I was doing just CW, setting up the KX2 and the laptop for logging was really quick.

My initial plan was to start on 10m and work my way up to 20m as time allowed, as I’d done recently with fair success at Lake Sammamish SP.

I started calling CQ at about 2115UTC, got my first caller at 2118UTC, and by 2138UTC I had 11 calls and a valid activation. Callers were from MN, NJ, NM, MD, NJ, VA, MB, and AK - 10m has been very kind the past few weeks.

When 10m dried up I moved to 12m, where about 10 minutes of calling got me just one contact - but that one contact was JJ1IZY from Japan.

I then moved to 15m, expecting things to really roll, but got just one contact (N0TU in KS) before the rain came and called a halt to things.

All in, a brief adventure but tackling several challenges that have been haunting me for some time: activating without cell service to spot and check callsigns, setting up using my own table instead of at a picnic table or shelter, and doing another activation entirely with CW.

Box Score

Total QSOs: 13
Park to Park: ?
Total CW QSOs: 13
Time spent operating: ~.75 hours
Solo CW bonus points: 13
Pleasant weather bonus: -10
Favorite Picnic Table points: 0

Things lost: 0
Things broken: 0
Equipment frustration time: 0 minutes
Vital gear not included in loadout: 0

Final Fun-O-Meter^(tm) reading: 7.5