Parks on the Air: First Bay State park ‘activated’

Dusk sets in at Hopkinton State Park in eastern Massachusetts.

Parks on the Air, an effort to encourage portable amateur-radio operations from national, state, and provincial parks, is two weeks old and has added its first three parks to the “activated” list.

Martin Gillen, VE3SIE, put Ontario’s Rideau River Provincial Park onto the POTA activation list with 23 contacts. You can read about his exploits here.

Charles Blackburn, AI4RI, did likewise with Bulow Creek State Park in Florida.

And yours truly spent a a few hours at Hopkinton State Park in Massachusetts gaining the five contacts needed to dub the park as activate, plus more contacts just to continue enjoying the outdoors this afternoon.

I was using a Yaesu FT-817, with a wire vertical up a 31-foot collapsible fiberglass pole for an antenna — and a ZM-2 tuner in between.

Part of the fun is meeting folks curious about the shockingly orange pole soaring 31 feet above the picnic table. The first inquiry came from a park ranger, who drove up to check on the progress folks were making in setting up a fireworks launch site along the peak of the lake’s earthen dam. The show was scheduled for this evening (and yes, I missed it — had to leave about 18:00 EDT for other commitments).

In chatting with the ranger, it turns out that the weekday dispatcher for the park also is a ham radio operator.

Several other passers-by stopped, stared at the pole, asked some really thoughtful questions, and wondered if the pole holding the antenna could double as a fishing rod. The short answer is: How’s your arm and upper body strength?

In the end, I pulled in seven contacts, including a quick exchange with KP4DX down in Puerto Rico.

In Massachusetts, we’re pretty lucky. We have 143 state parks, all packed into a small state. You have to work hard not to stumble onto one in your travels around the commonwealth.

With other hams in the state catching wind of the new Parks on the Air group, I suspect it won’t take long to activate a large number of parks in fairly short order.

Now, where to go tomorrow? Dart? Check! Map on dart board? Check!  What a scientific selection process!

Parks on the Air — a new group forming

Harris Lake in New York's Adirondack State Park: Parks on the Air, anyone?

Ya gotchyer Islands on the Air. Ya gotchyer Summits on the Air. Here comes Parks on the Air.

The goal is to “activate” and operate portable ham radio gear from state and provincial parks in the US and Canada, as well as their counterparts in other countries. The effort is only about a week old, so folks are still trying to gin up a website.

In the meantime, organizers have established a Yahoo group. Anyone interested in breathing fresh air while tapping Morse code or keying a mic in the wide open spaces is more than welcome to join.

If you’re interested, and want to get in on the ground floor, you can join the Yahoo group. You’ll find it here.

QRP Afield, Chowdercon: yep, a great weekend

 

 

Sending out a CQ AF during QRP Afield. Lots of open-air, on-air fun, nice chats with passers-by, and two tasty seafood meals.

 

QRP Afield on Sept. 18 was primo — great weather, reasonable band conditions, and good times with a half dozen or so fellow hams from the New England QRP Club.

We shared Four Tree Island with picnicking families, a few overfed, underworked sea gulls, and one bashful woodchuck. And we shared chatter over a lunch of chowder and lobster rolls and later seafood dinners. That’s the Chowdercon part. The fifth annual, to be exact, organized by Carl Achin, WA1ZCQ.

A quick note about my CW station that day: I used a Yaesu FT-817 with a NEQRP NEScaf filter sitting on top of it. I operated off the battery pack I threw together a couple of months ago. And yes, they are the same batteries — now up to about 18 hours of operation. The larger of the two plastic containers holds a larger, 7 Ah battery I brought because I though I’d run my smaller pack dry before the event was over. Didn’t happen.

I ran the rig through a ZM-2 tuner (quite popular among the assembled NEQRPers, it seems) and into a Pac 12 portable vertical.

You never know what you’re going to see at these events.

‘Chowdercon,’ QRP Afield: great weekend ahead!

A warm bowl of chowder is just one of the attractions for Chowdercon 2010. (Photo courtesy of foodistablog)

OK, so a steaming bowl of New England’s finest chowder isn’t exactly the first thing anyone associates with ham-radio QRP events, but then, this is New England.

This Saturday, QRP buffs from around the area are meeting on Four Tree Island, part of the Four Tree Island Recreation Area in Portsmouth, N.H., for Chowdercon. It’s a one-day, breakfast-though-dinner gathering that combines tall tales, show and tell, and some old fashioned QRP operating.

The gig coincides with the New England QRP Club’s QRP Afield contest. It’s designed to get QRP buffs out of their arm chairs and into the field for a day of sun (at least that’s what’s in the forecast for Portsmouth) and contacts, with a hefty dose of fresh air thrown in.

Participants at Chowdercon will be using W1C as the call sign for the QRP Afield event. You can find information about the contest’s rules and scoring here.

According to Carl Achin, WA1ZCQ, who’s a one-man promo department for this gig, the day begins at 8 a.m. at the Golden Egg Restaurant in Portsmouth, after which the assembled multitudes wend their way to the recreation area and commence set up.

Lunch is at Geno’s Chowder and Sandwich Shop. Dinner (lahbstah, of co-ahs) is at Warren’s Lobster House. (Pssst! One of the best kept secrets for enjoying a bowl of New England clam chowder? A few dashes of Tabasco Sauce, I gah-rone-tee!)

Chowdercon’s outdoor activities run through take-down time at 5 p.m., so feel free to drop by at any time during the day to join the fun or just kibitz.

If you’re interested in swinging by — and staying for — Chowdercon, here’s a map. And don’t let the little channel between Pierce and Four Tree Islands fool you. There’s a causeway-like walkway between the two. Click the “Sat” button on the map; you’ll see it. We’ll be on Four Tree!

View Larger Map

Spiffing up an antique Morse code key — Epilogue

The final mount for my World War 1 field-telegraph key

Well folks, here’s the final mounting that wraps up my first attempt at rehabing an old, old key.

A special note of thanks goes to Scott Robbins, the new owner of The Vibroplex Company, Inc.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I picked up a Vibroplex Code Mite at the ARRL’s New England Convention in late August. Its base looked perfect as the final bolt-down spot for my spiffed up antique.

I asked to buy a base from him, and he kindly sent for free one whose top, with the Vibroplex markings, had been scratched.

That rendered baseless what would have been Code Mite #830. But its loss was my gain. I merely flipped the base over to get a plain top, and the rest is history.

Can I go back to the rig and play radio now???

Silence the key, cool the soldering iron, smell the roses!

It's a beautiful day at the mill-pond turn-around point during my constitutional on this Labor Day

Just a reminder that it’s worth shutting down the radio, turning off the soldering iron, just for a while, and cherishing what’s around you.

And now, for the QRO Labor Day barbecue — ribs, burgers, and some chicken-and-apple sausage.

For you die-hard QRP fans, there’s a grill just for you! And in true QRP form, it’s made from an Altoids tin!

This was offered up by Cameron Scott on inhabit.com. Room for one briquette and burger!

Happy Labor Day!

“Lean-to” homebrew stand for Elecraft’s KX1

New stand for my KX1 (rubber feet to be added), courtesy of KR1ST

Using a QRP radio like Elecraft’s KX1 is a lot of fun.

But for use at the shack, I’ve found that the flat radio either has to be right under my nose to see the tuning read-out, or it needs a stand.

Which is where Alex Krist, KR1ST, and his FT-817 stand come in.

He cleverly crafted it from a plastic  CD/DVD case. I stumbled across his project during a Google search one evening as I searched for what I vaguely recalled was a CD-case stand for the KX1.

I came across Alex’s stand early in the search, and it seemed a natural for adapting to the KX1. I searched no further.

You could also envision trying this with an HB-1 or the Hendricks PFR-3.

You can see how Alex built his stand here. But to save you an extra mouse click, here’s the project as I worked it this afternoon (in about 15 minutes). Oh yes, thanks go to son Wes for sacrificing a CD case.

One antenna idea that’s all wet, but it works!

Hams are nothing if not resourceful in crafting antennas.

They use simple wires, various configurations of aluminum tubing. Heck, folks even load up their down spouts. But hooking your rig up to a fountain?

This came into my inbox today. And while I’ve never heard of it before, the notion of an “ionic liquid antenna” has been around for some time, it seems. Just ask Doctor Google.

You gotta think the applications would be fairly specialized. But hey, if you live in a hosing, er, housing development that doesn’t allow outside antennas but does allow fountains, this may be just what you’re looking for!