October 22, 2022
By Michal (VE7TMZ)
Michal, VE7TMZ, along with his friend Austin, VE7QH, met at Pritchard Provincial Park near Kamloops for a Saturday morning POTA activation. It was the first time that this park, https://pota.app/#/park/VE-3984, was fully activated.
The weather cooperated beautifully with a high of 15C, moderate wind, and lots of sunshine.
Austin is a seasoned POTA operator, whereas I have only been out a couple of times, both of which were unsuccessful due to rig/antenna/cabling problems. Big thanks to Austin for mentoring me and getting me on the air this time!
I operated FT8 on 20m, whereas Austin operated CW also on 20m. The bands did not cooperate at first, but towards late morning/lunch they opened up and we were able to make 10+ successful contacts in a short time. I tried to use 40m, but with the wind swinging the antenna, the SWR jumped excessively between 1.5 - 4, so I opted not to use that band. We each also made a 2m simplex contact.
Austin used:
- Yaesu FT-891 transceiver @ max 100w
- an LDG antenna tuner
- CQ paddles and straight key
- Chameleon MPAS Lite vertical antenna
- HamRS on cell phone
- 9Ah lead acid battery in custom made battery box
I used:
- Icom IC-7100 @ max 50w
- N7DDC ATU-100 tuner
- Wolf River Coils TIA 1000 antenna
- Evolve III Windows 10 laptop with HamRS
- 35Ah lead acid battery in custom made battery box
