QRPxpedition to a gorgeous Mt. Holyoke park

A view of the Connecticut River Valley from near my operating position on Mt. Holyoke, within J.A. Skinner State Park in central Massachusetts. The river is barely visible along the tree line. This is why QRP was invented!

Parks on the Air is back in business in Massachusetts, thanks to some great weather (if the low 90s is great) and some wonderful spots to operate from.

This time, the destination for my outing was A.J. Skinner State Park, at the west end of the tiny Holyoke Range in Central Massachusetts. The park is about a two-hour drive from Franklin, MA, where I live. With plenty of picnic areas on the summit, along with trees for antenna support (thank you for pointing that out, Google Earth), Skinner looked like a good spot to chip away at some of my vacation time outside the confines of Camp Idohwanna (our home).

So, at 6:00 a.m. EDT on July 19, I dropped my wife off at the commuter-rail station in Franklin for her trip in to work, topped off the car’s fuel tank, topped off my internal tank at a local Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through, and hit the interstate for the trip to Mt. Holyoke.

I reached the park entrance at 8 a.m., about the time I’d estimated — and one hour early, it turns out. The park opens at 9 a.m. But that’s why I brought along my Nook, with, among other things, Ade Weiss’s new book on antennas and propagation for QRPers loaded onto it (I love how these readers handle PDF files!). With the car parked under a thick forest canopy at the base of the mountain, out came the Nook while I waited for a ranger to open the park gate for the drive to the summit.

The summit hosts an old hotel first built in the 1850s. A little over a decade after the hotel was built, the owners installed a cable car system to bring guests to the summit.

The Summit House atop Mt. Holyoke. Once a stylish hotel, the state is trying to make repairs that will allow the building to open to tourists visiting the summit.

After scouting out a couple of picnic sites, I opted for a site nearest the summit — which is 942 feet above sea level. Unfortunately, the best table was in the middle of a clearing, with trees either too close or too far to drape either the long or the short Norcal Doublets I’d brought. So up went the hideously orange, 31-foot Jackite pole and out came the wire vertical, plus two radials, which I oriented to the east and west.

The station’s exposure to the sun for several hours on a 90-degree F. day promopted me to loan the gear a hat. I had a second hat for my noggin.

My hat serves as a sun shade for my FT-817ND. I bet the Tilley family didn't envision this use for one of their "Endurables!" After sitting in the sun, both key and paddles encouraged a sending speed for Morse code of about 30 words per minute!

During the day, several folks visiting the summit stopped by for a chat, including one chap who had just gotten his Technician’s license. Despite the heat, a few families came up to occupy some of the more-shaded picnic tables at lunch time.

The haul for the day, between chats and my own lunch break, included:

KW7D — New Mexico — 17 meters

CO8LY — Cuba — 17 meters

W4MPS — North Carolina — 20 meters

K6JSS/5 — Arkansas — 20 meters (the QRP Amateur Radio Club International’s 50th-anniversary station for the week.)

NS0TA — New Hampshire (Summits on the Air, Mt. Lafayette!) — 20 meters

N4EX — North Carolina — 20 meters

W9UX — Wisconsin — 20 meters

W4LVP — Tennessee — 20 meters

I’m still trying to chase down what I copied as IK0TA on 20 meters.  The call smacks of another SOTA station, but it appears nowhere in QRZ.com. Nor does it appear in listings for Summit on the Air activations for July 19. Oh well, the one that got away?

The views were spectacular, prompting time-outs from the key to enjoy my surroundings.

Looking north-northeast to catch a meander in the Connecticut river.

Not only is this fertile farming country...

...it's also a valley fertile for the mind. Towers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, one of several colleges and universities in the valley, rise (sort of) in the distance.

A peek at the Connecticut River and beyond through a break in the forest canopy.

You can't reach a top and not record the survey monument that marks the official summit.

And now back to radio.

One thought that occurred to me as I basked (baked?) in the sun: How well prepared are we to provide emergency communications for several hours with no shelter from the sun. It sounds a bit silly, perhaps. But during the initial hours of a natural disaster in which hams may be called on to provide communications support, do we have the rudimentary tools to ensure we and our gear are protected from excessive heat from the sun?

I checked out sun shades for picnic tables. They exist, with supports that clamp to each end of a table. The pitched, fabric roof can tilt to adjust the location of the shade somewhat. But they look big, bulky, and what if you have no table?

Something tells me that over then next 10 days, some more POTA activations are in order — as much to try out techniques for sun-shading as for adding new parks to the POTA roster.

Any ideas out there, especially from you folks in the West or Southwest?