This post probably won’t interest most of my readers, but for my fellow ham radio operators and radio nerds, I managed to do a POTA activation… sort of… last Sunday.

I managed to get 13 contacts at Park #US-4450 in the Talladega National Forest. I say “sort of” because the cell signal was so bad I couldn’t get online to spot myself, so I just hunted contacts on and off all day and hoped somebody would hear me calling.

For this activation, I used a Lab599 TX-500 portable HF transceiver running 10 watts on 50 MHz. Well… technically more like 7 watts by the time everything was said and done. QRP operation always makes things more challenging, but honestly, that’s part of the fun. Anybody can make contact with a high-powered base station. It takes a little patience, stubbornness, and luck to do it with low power from the side of a mountain.

My setup included one of the original POTA Reels antennas along with a POTA33H telescopic mast that extends to 33 feet. I mounted everything using a hitch-mounted flagpole holder that slides into the receiver hitch on my truck. In true ham radio fashion, I also improvised a little engineering by using the packaging from the POTA33H mast to wedge everything tighter inside the hitch mount. If it looks questionable but works, then it’s officially “field tested.”

The biggest challenge was the location itself. Rest Stop #2 was at the bottom of the hill with mountains surrounding us in every direction. Even with the antenna nearly 33 feet in the air, I still struggled getting my signal out. And having only around 7 watts coming from the radio certainly didn’t help matters.

Still, I managed 13 contacts, and honestly, I was happy with that considering the conditions.

This wasn’t my first activation, though. Last May, I activated from the USS Alabama during one of their Living History events. Over the course of two days, I made more than 200 contacts there. That remains my personal record and probably spoiled me a little when it comes to future activations.

There’s just something enjoyable about setting up a portable station in the middle of nowhere and seeing how far a little bit of wire and a few watts can travel. Some people golf. Some people fish. Some of us throw antennas into the air and get excited when somebody three states away says, “You’re five-nine in Alabama.”

And honestly, that’s probably enough to convince most normal people that we’re all a little crazy.

73’s

KJ4PZI