Sawhill Ponds POTA Activation

Recently the Parks on the Air organization added more places where you could do a POTA activation. While looking at the map on the POTA.app website, I noticed a park really close to my QTH. It wasn’t even activated yet so I took it upon myself to activate it for the first time.

So the other day, my XYL and I went to Sawhill Ponds to do a quick POTA activation. A YouTube video is linked below.

I successfully activated it on FT4 and FT8 including getting 2 XE stations! I like to run FT4 whenever I can, since it’s less crowded so its easier to not be “talked over” by higher powered FT8 stations. I’m also impatient and FT4 QSOs are twice as fast as FT8.

Normally, obtaining digital QSOs doesn’t surprise me when QRP @ 5 watts, but this activation was a challenge because there are noisy power lines very close by, as well as a large solar station nearby — so I didn’t even try SSB.

The other surprising thing about this activation was that my QSO’s were all to the east and southeast of my station, but my radial was pointed southwest! Normally I can QSO with California stations on less than 1 watt but no one on the west coast was interested (or ignoring L-vertical physics).

And lastly, I realized my TalentCell 12v battery was pretty noisy. When I connected it to my ICOM, the noise floor shot straight up. At QRP I was already challenged, so I elected not to run 10 watts to improve my chances at QSOs. I wish there was a way to bypass the BMS circuitry in this pack of LiFePO4 batteries so that I would have a lower noise floor. Sounds like an experiment with 16550 batteries is in my future.

73,

AE0RS