Parks on the Air is a fun way to get on the air without too many expectations. One (or both!) of the operators are in a park - usually away from the everyday convenience of mains electricity and bathrooms. It is also a great introduction into operating “wild”, and seems like a pretty good preparation for taking the gear camping.
The POTA-website shows you who is on the air and where you can find them, leaving you to tweak your setup in order to hear them, and have them hear you. The other side of the coin is activating a park, meaning you set up in the park and others try to hunt you. You upload the log afterwards and eveyrone gets their credits automatically.
Preparation #
Gear #
Apart from the pole it all fits into a backpack pretty easily and I was way overprepared.
- Xiegu G90;
- 12V Battery (12Ah: LFP12-12), no charger required for a day trip;
- Coax cable (2m & 10m);
- Antenna: EFHW 40/20/10 from HFkits.nl, including the 49:1 unun;
- Pole (Spiderbeam 7m)
Tools #
- Leatherman Signal multitool (pliers, knife, cutting tool);
- Rope, tie down straps and tent pegs
- A lighter to touch up the frayed ends of the rope;
- Tent pegs can be used with the tie down straps to set up the pole in soil or sand or tied up against something;
- NanoVNA & cables - Even though I didn’t use it and the antenna is not properly tuned (yet).
After ordering and/or collecting most parts, I found out not everything was immediately compatible and I had to find a way to connect all 12V devices to eachother. I settled for Anderson Powerpole connectors, they seem all the rage, and added a 30A connector to some 2,5mm² wire for the battery and some 15A connectors to the charger (3A) and transceiver (6A max, 0.5 continuous). They seem pretty cool! They are easy to connect and disconnect and feel solid.
Activating #
The first attempt wasn’t so great. We went up to the beach near the North Sea, but even though the forecast was only 30% rain, it rained pretty hard. After scouting for a location for 5-10 minutes we were soaked and left but tried a quick setup in my parents yard which went okay but was unrelated to POTA.
The day after, back home, with the weather looking a lot better with mostly sun, I tried in the closest park to my home, NL-0194 Roggebotzand. Setting up was a piece of cake, being able to strap the fiber pole to a wooden pole marker and lifting the antenna wire up in the air.
Unfortunately I was positioned about 5m behind a sign that designated a quiet zone so I stayed in the car for most of the activation — leaving my back aching due to the weird positioning — and I was unable to measure the antenna and make it resonant on the 10-20m bands.
All in all it resulted in about 30 short QSOs and it was the first time being part of the receiving end of a pileup. A few park-to-park contacts were also made, but there was an issue with the ADIF logfile (twice). POTA doesn’t support the POTA specific fields that are part of the specification since a few years. It’s pretty nice getting preferential treatment even though you’re a weak signal.
The battery drained to about 13.3V, which is about 80% charged according to most LiFePO4 charts. Extrapolating that, a single full battery charge could last me anywhere from 5-8 hours of active use.