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While on business travel in Northern Alberta recently, I found myself with a slow workday and a few hours owed from lunches not taken that week. A quick plan was hatched and out the door I went after ensuring that all at work was going to be fine without me for 2-3 hours. But before I get to that story…
While travelling to and from this site, I’ve made it a mission to activate as many ATNO [All-Time-New-Ones, ie. never-activated parks] as possible within POTA. I plan these 500km trips with some small side journeys to these parks or natural areas and to break up the otherwise long drive along the foothills of the Canadian Rockies up and down the Highway 22 (aka. Cowboy Trail) corridor. It’s truly a lovely drive and I don’t mind it in the least.
Now back to my late-day lunch break adventure…
With the nearest park to me (VE-3162, Whitecourt Mountain) already activated but only on phone, I figured I’d activate it on CW and do more QSOs than the other activator just for good measure. I can’t believe that a park this close to a townsite had only one activation before I got there to activate it.
If that isn’t enough, it’s also a SOTA entity [VE6/ST-102] with a broad and not-steep slope making the activation zone quite wide. On top of that I can do this two-fer as a drive-up! This worked in my favour as I parked my truck within the activation zone! This SOTA entity had been done a couple of times already so I knew that electrical noise would be my nemesis.
For those of you that may have disremembered, I’m in shape -round- and that shape doesn’t easily climb summits, so a drive-up is totally my kind of summit. But I had to get a move on as there were only two hours left on the Zulu timeclock. At my hotel room I had more gear, but being nervous nelly that I am at times, I do not leave my KX3 in the room unless there’s a safe. Given that the KX3 gets lonely without companions, I ensure that it always has a battery, antenna and key along for the ride so they keep each other happy as can be I had just enough of my portable kit with me to make this happen.
A quick drive up this steep and very rough *cough* road *cough* and I had arrived, and I was suddenly thankful for high ground clearance, 4 wheel drive and brand new all-terrain tires. This Natural Area is well known as being the highest ridge for many kilometers around, has no less than a dozen communications towers on it along with the powerlines for those, and it’s also known for its popularity in the hunting community. As I had no international orange clothing with me and it’s hunting season, I parked my truck nearest to the fire lookout which is a designated “no shooting” zone.
A quick listen on the HF radio in the truck confirmed the noise, as well as a fast listen to the IARU beacons beforehand while enroute told me this would be a rough one with QSB and odd propagation for this time of day, 1515h local and about 1.5h to sundown on this mid-November day at this latitude.
It’s about 45F out at this point and the sun dwindling as is the temperature, so I moved quickly. A couple of lawn chairs made for a fine rest for my somewhat padded tuchus, and the other chair an impromptu table for the radio gear.
The AX1 counterpoise wire was elevated off the ground about 2′. I wanted to experiment with this configuration for a while, but quickly determined it to be a poor idea as I was constantly re-tuning to eliminate high SWR given the antenna, my CW key and I were all in very close proximity. Until I got it dialed in, with the wire and gear positioned just so, I’d tune up to low SWR, then the second my hands touched the key the SWR would go all wonky. Reposition and try again (aka lather rinse repeat) and I got it dialed in some 6 tries later. Super-frustrating!
For the SOTA part of this activation, and while I was within the confines of the POTA entity, I attempted to log with two instances of HAMRS, one log on my laptop and another on my phone. Juggling those two and the CW key in my lap were very difficult and I won’t do that again. As I write up this article I’m remembering the motto to keep it stupidly simple; for me that means logging on one thing only next time, be it paper or my laptop.
I posted a spot to SOTA via SOTAmāt and was overwhelmed with callers almost at once – I didn’t think this happened, I thought to myself. I’d later see that RBN picked me up for my POTA planned activation so I had both POTA and SOTA hunters calling me. Whoops, I didn’t mean to do that as I wanted to hear some S2S action first, but anyway I can’t change it now and it made the SOTA activation go quite quickly. Eight callers later (including WG0AT!) the sun was now down below the trees and it got cold quickly, so I stopped calling, packed up and moved into the truck. Any QSOs in the truck would only count towards POTA, but at least I’d be warm
What’s SOTAmāt and how do you configure it? This short video will tell you.
Just for grins, when I got back into the truck I moved up 1kHz so that RBN spots could show me the difference between my AX1 and the ATAS-120A on the truck. I set the FT-857D for the same power to level the playing field. My only takeaway from the chart below is that the added metal of my F-350 as a ground plane helped with antenna efficiency as it yielded about a 1 S unit difference.
With a few minutes remaining in the Zulu day, I quickly dropped to 40m for a Discord-coordinated contact with Jesse VE6JTW at his home. While that was unsuccessful, I was able to fit in a couple more QSOs before the Zulu clock ran out and I had to get back to work anyways.
List of gear used for this activation:
- Elecraft KX3
- Walmart insulated lunch bag (holds KX3 and other stuff)
- Talentcell LiFePO4 6Ah cell and zippered pouch
- CIR-45D paddle key
- Sistema 400 ml plastic tub (any tub will do)
- Seadream headphone cable for the key
- Elecraft AX1
- Pro-Case electric toothbrush case for AX1 (also fits RigExpert Stick analyzers)
- Homebrew electret mic for KX3 (8.5cm long, 7g)
- Leadsound 3W portable speaker
- Apple MacBook Air M1, 2020
- Apple iPhone SE 3rd Generation
- Bear spray on hand, not used
- Yaesu FT-857D
- Yaesu ATAS-120A with 60″ whip
- 2005 Ford F-350 longbox crewcab
It’s as easy as one-two-three
SOTA and POTA while travelling are as simple as one-two-three if you 1. have your gear, 2. know where you are going, and 3. have the time.
Most of quick execution is about preparation, things like studying maps and reading the notes of others if they exist. For this quick activation I did about an hour of prep before I hit the road, not including a refresher on how to activate and upload a log to SOTA as I’d not done that in a year. Tools like the Alberta Parks website and their satellite imagery, then compared with Google Maps satellite imagery, Google street view (if it exists), printouts of the location with hand annotations of local road names written on them are part of my standard preparation.
Activations while travelling make for a fun diversion from work and encourages me to get out of the truck for a stretch (and radio!) break on the long drives.
72 and dit dit,
…Vince
First introduced to the magic of radio by a family member in 1969, Vince has been active in the hobby since 2002. He is an Accredited examiner in Canada and the USA, operates on almost all of the modes, and is continually working on making his CW proficiency suck less. He participates in public service events around Western Canada and is active on the air while glamping, mobile, at home or doing a POTA activation. You can hear him on the Ham Radio Workbench podcast, follow him on Twitter @VE6LK, and view the projects and articles on his website.
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