Frontenac State Park

Its been a couple of weeks since my last POTA attempt, and about 8 months since I last went down to Frontenac State park in southeast Minnesota, so my 2 youngest sons and I joined our friend and his kids for a quick overnight campout at this beautiful park.

About an hour south of my home, this park sits atop a rise that overlooks both Minnesota and Wisconsin.

On our drive in I had to stop the car to get what I think is an Eastern Fox Snake off the road. If you know for sure then please let me know in the comments. It was doing its best to be intimidating by hissing and vibrating its tail, and striking at my shoe.

My son was torn between seeing the snake with his own eyes or looking at the screen to keep the snake in the camera.

Note I only had my shoe there to give it something to focus on or target while I used the stick to gently pick it up.

It was a bit grumpy at having his time warming up in the sun interrupted by us, but we were able to safely relocate him off into the woods.

After setting up camp, and while waiting on our friends to arrive, I quickly put up my Chameleon MPAS Lite which has been a consistently good performer.

Setup is really quick and after running out about 25 feet of counterpoise, I ran some coax over to a tree that I sat against. I hooked up my Elecraft KX2 and my BaMaKey TP-111 paddle and got down to work.

I forgot to bring my knee board (lesson learned)

After spotting myself on https://pota.app, I called CQ on 20 meters for a couple of minutes before I had my first contact.

Now I have no doubt that he was doing all the work – signal report was only a 149, and it took a couple of times for me to be able to get the callsign accurately copied (thanks Alfonso for your patience!) – but I was able to log EC1R in Palencia, Spain!

My first CW DX contact ever – and at only 5 watts. My sons couldn’t figure out why I was so excited.

In only about 20 minutes, with kids circling me asking about dinners, I logged 10 contacts and then signed off to get them taken care of.

Map created at https://www.levinecentral.com/adif2map/

Everything was logged into the HAMRS app on my phone which, if you haven’t used before, is an absolutely phenomenal app for POTA. (pick it up for multiple platforms at https://hamrs.app/)

Our friends arrived shortly thereafter and we focused on sharing food, friendship, and beautiful scenery.

We had to head back early this morning, so a fairly short trip on a July 4th weekend, but a great time for sure!

The kids spent a couple of hours trying to start their own fires with a fire steel. Great way to occupy kids and get them focused on something 😉

Breakfast of champions – cinnamon rolls in a dutch oven over coals

Yesterday I took my sons with me to camp at a local State Park that we hadn’t been to before.

Frontenac State Park (POTA K-2484) is approximately 1 hour south of my QTH in a sparsely populated area along the St. Croix river which forms the boundary between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

It is a beautiful park that is atop a forested rise that sits above farmlands and the river on the east.

We reserved the group camp site and invited a couple of friends and their kids to come along, and I – of course – brought my radio gear in the hopes of doing a second successful POTA activation.

Arriving in the afternoon, and with it being November in Minnesota, the sun sets quickly and earlier with each passing week. The weather was getting colder and the wind was quite gusty, making the cool fall temperature feel much colder than it was. We set about getting tents setup and getting some dinner, and waited for our friends to arrive. While we waited, I got things setup.

I took the opportunity to bring my Lab599 Discovery TX-500 radio which had only been used from home since my acquisition in August of this year. I also brought my LnR Precision Mountain Topper 4 v2 for the same reason, hoping to get both of them on the air outdoors.

My 15 year old son making faces at me as I take a picture of my setup. Thanks son! You can see both the TX-500 in the center, and the N0SA paddle in the lower right.

I paired the two radios with a QRP Guys Tri-band Vertical which was supported by a 20ft (6m) Jackite telescopic pole.

New to me for this activation was a N0SA SOTA Paddle – an ultra-miniature paddle that is produced in very small lots by N0SA. This thing is tiny, but it is superbly constructed and a solid performer.

I called CQ once in order to get RBN to spot me and hoping to get the https://www.pota.app spots to pick up RBN and get me on the list (I scheduled a spot window before leaving). I was picked up in Arizona and California on 20m.

Immediately I had K7GT in Oregon come back and that kicked off a 20 minute back and forth. Allan was most patient with me as my fingers became increasingly numb and my fist became increasingly bad. Being a new CW operator meant that I also had to have him repeat things sometimes.

In the end, I had to call it quits as even with some thin gloves on I couldn’t reliably work the paddle any longer. The wind was gusting to 20+ mph (32kph or so) and with lower temps it was cutting straight through the wool.

I packed up the radios after a single contact and settled down by the fire with friends and my sons and enjoyed the warmth provided by both. We slept that night serenaded by the local coyotes while the raccoons scratched around the picnic table next to us looking for any crumbs left behind from dinner.

While I would have greatly enjoyed completing an activation of this park, I had to pack up early this morning to return home – something that I had known before I left the day before.

All in all this was another learning experience as all endeavors are; first of all I need to come up with a solid fall/winter POTA plan to deal with the cold and remain on the air, and secondly that even though it didn’t go as planned the experience was worth it nevertheless. I had logged a great contact with K7GT and had a good time with my boys.

Time with my sons is never wasted. 🙂