A Hot August JSCARC POTA @ San Jacinto. #21

San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site remains the most convenient and popular POTA site for our JSCARC members.

Today’s visit was another good POTA outing with a smacking reminder this is Texas in August… Mosquitos, Heat, and Humidity.  Perhaps spoiled with the recent cooler and wetter weather patterns in past weeks, it was yet again an inspiring and perspiring morning in our “usual” location under the shelter of the aged picnic tables near the Independence Parkway entrance to the park.

Although in the shade, there was zero breeze which didn’t even give us some temporary relief.

Nonetheless Jayant KG5LJZ and I (W5OC) each successfully activated our minimum 10 stations.

I arrived first around 8:40AM.  A bit wary for entering the park before it’s widely posted official opening at 0900, I nervously scanned for angry park rangers as I slowly drove into our setup location.  Last year, we had a bit of a light kerfuffle with the park ranger due to some misunderstandings including entering the park too early.  I sure didn’t want to revisit nor unintentionally poke the bear.

Upon arrival, I noticed that the long wooden fence which separated our setup area from the park’s maintenance and ranger area was completely torn down.  A large stacked up pile of old fencing was seen close by, likely an blown down from Hurricane Beryl’s winds that also took down 3 sections of fencing at my QTH.  There was a significant amount of tree branch debris scattered all over the site as well- an indicator that this section of park, got some good wind force impacts.

Setting up QRP is easy compared to higher power- no need to lug a big battery nor a larger radio.  So that’s what I did with my favorite radio, the Elecraft KX2 again.  POTA remains a terrific real-world opportunity to try out different configurations.  For today, I started off with a recently repaired random length end fed antenna that attached directly to the RF output port of the radio using no coax or feedline.  After calling “CQ” for 15 minutes with only one 339 reply from Calif, it was likely not working.  So, I mentally tagged this antennas as “broken” and replaced it with my favorite portable antenna, the Sotabeam Bandhopper 20/40m linked dipole hoisted up with my ultra-lightweight Carbon 6 telescoping mast.  I quickly made 23 QSOs with 5W.  The band conditions were mediocre as I was mostly getting 559 reports but at least getting robust responses to my CQs.

As I was contemplating leaving after getting more than 10 contacts (you need at least this amount for a qualify activation under POTA rules), when Jayant called me- he was coming down to participate.

For Jayant, I wanted him to have a bigger signal to make it easier for contacts, so I replaced my QRP setup with my FT-991A 100W radio.  I moved and remounted the linked dipole closer to the shelter so we could both fit under the shade provided by the shelter.

As I was setting up the new configuration, I noticed that needed a UHF to BNC adapter to mate the antenna feedline to the FT-991A.  I was missing from my antenna bag and it potentially was a show stopper for the use of this higher power radio for Jayant. 

John Maca AB5SS to the rescue… Last year, John gave me a palm sized thermoplastic screw-in container that he 3D printed.  He suggested it was great for keeping various/emergency RF adapters and connectors.  I remember putting some of my adapters in it and leaving it in the minivan for a emergency.  But I didn’t remember if I had placed an PL259 to BNC adapter in it.  I excitedly went back to the minivan remembering that I had John’s white container in the glove box.  After I opened it, my heart started sinking (that sickening feeling of gloom) as the 1st two adapters were N-connector adapters only.  But underneath, the 3rd one was the UHF connector which I needed!  yay! A big shout out to John!

I got the radio setup with the needed adapter.  While waiting for Jayant, I sent an email to Dan KG5PVP, asking if he wanted to try a QSO with us.  Dan is still in Montana, so this would be a Montana to Texas attempt under questionable propagation.  Jayant arrived shortly and after we made a few QSOs, we could hear Dan’s signal!  Unfortunately, Dan could barely hear us.  Dan texted us that he could faintly hear us, but we were essentially unintelligible.  This is where having our W5RRR 1KW and an 80 foot high multi-element beam would have made the QSO clear as a bell. 

Jayant ended up whipping out 17 QSOs on 20m CW, for his first CW POTA activation.  Congrats to Jayant!

 

While Jayant is still advancing his CW skills, he did a marvelous job with just a slight bit of coaching.  BTW, a shout out to all of Jayant’s other coaches at the Long Island CW association as well as from the JSCARC. 

During the hour+ time spent with Jayant, I reflected on the complication of our CW protocols.  It was a reminder how learning CW requires lots of assistance.  I think about the all the different sequences one needs to send during an effective QSO.   There are over a dozen different transmissions to invoke depending on various happenings during a POTA QSO.  CW really can be challenging to learn in the beginning.

It was past noon, so we called it quits.  Upon stowing the gear, my carbon fiber telescoping mast would not complete retract despite using quite a bit of force without snapping the stubborn thing.  I presumed it was caused by the heat expansion to the carbon-fiberglass rod walls.  Instead of it’s convenient 17″ collapsed size, it stubbornly was stuck at about 6′ in length.  Yep, after I got it home, I allowed it to soak in the cooling relief of one of the greatest invention of human kind: air conditioning.  After a few minutes, the stuck segments were easily retracted with the typical manual twisting force.  Not sure how this type of problem could impact my future planned SOTA (Summits on The Air) outings during this summer.  It surely would be an awkward risk when trying to backpack out of a longer distance hike or in a rocky area.

Overall, the 20m band conditions were, meh… the weather was hot…the company was great… ham radio is awesome…and we’re ready for POTA #22 tentatively scheduled for August 31.

73  W5OC

Here’s a vid of Jayant KG5LJZ in action (Kent paddle loaned from AB5SS)