Good thing you don't have to be out of your vehicle for POTA and WFD
Because it was pretty much at my limit far as temps go. The actual air temperature was -10F when Steve KM9G and I rolled into the parking lot for Straight Lake State Park on Sunday morning for WFD. Steve rolled down his window and told me that this was a stupid idea. I agreed and we proceeded to put up the antenna.
This was a joint activation for Winter Field Day and POTA that had virtually no planning. I went out on Saturday for a quick Pre-WFD POTA activation and on the spur of the moment did a quick YouTube livestream. Pretty much just to see if it would work.
Much to my surprise, I was able to livestream from my phone with no issues. Even more surprising is that people actually started watching it and hop into the chat. Steve (Youtube's Temporally Offline / TO.) was in the chat and said we should do an activation together soon. Well, that ended up being the very next day.
Straight Lake State Park
Straight Lake State Park is located near Luck, Wisconsin. It has a nice campground, boat access to (you guessed it) Straight Lake, and the Ice Age Trail runs through it; providing a POTA "2'Fer" opportunity. Besides the Ice Age Trail, the park has a network of nice, well marked hiking trails for you to explore.
The Straight Lake Wildlife Area is adjacent to the park as well, however it is not a POTA entity. No real point in added it either, in my opinion. There are plenty of POTA parks in the area.
Link to Wisconsin DNR website for more info on Straight Lake Park
Link to the Ice Age Trail Alliance website for more info on the Ice Age Trail
The Activation
TO and I met in the main parking lot. The original plan was to setup my portable ice fishing shelter, but decided to make it simpler and just operate out of my truck. We only planned to be there for a few hours, so this would be a more efficient use of our time.
We attached my Spiderbeams 12 meter pole to a post in the parking lot and ran the PackTenna Linked EFHW back to my truck. Placed the Yaesu FT-891 between us and fired things up.
On the frequency I had the rig on from the day before, was a station from Russia calling CQ for DX stations. Since we were pretty sure we qualified I threw out my call. To our collective shock, he responded to me on the first try.
After that, we found an empty spot on 15 meters and started calling CQ. We didn't have constant cell coverage, so we couldn't get out a spot. I tried sending a tweet on Twitter, thinking it might just be enough signal for it to get out.
Without much action calling CQ, we spent about an hour chasing other WFD stations by simply turning the VFO knob to scan the bands.
Overall a fun time with Steve, just hanging out BSings and causally activating the park mostly by a "hunt and pounce" approach.
Pictures
Below are some pictures I took of the park. Well, within a few feet of the main parking lot any way...
Thanks for taking the time to check this out, and please share this with anyone you think would enjoy it!
