Missed it by ..... that much!

POTA folks have been busy adding new parks and a couple of them showed up near me. Unfortunately, I still work and could not get there ASAP to get the coveted first activation of the park. Today, on my day off I noticed that K-10077 Charlotte State Game Land had a few activations, but none on CW. Furthermore, the weather was going to be excellent. I had also received the new battery for my motorcycle and had just had it installed. [See my previous post on how it left me stranded on my previous activation after the battery died!] So all things are pointing to an activation begging to be made

I set off here around 9 AM and the ride was expected to take about 90 minutes. It was a day with off and on clouds, but the temperatures were in the mid 60s [15-17 deg C]. The ride was fantastic! The entire journey was on the interstate; but, the road passes through undeveloped areas with a lot of vegetation. The leaves were ablaze with fall colors. This is just a little past the peak color here owing to some wet weather we had recently, but it was great nevertheless.

The ride went off without a hitch and I arrived at the tiny alcove cleared for parking in the game area. As expected, there were areas of slush due to the recent rain. I had to carefully negotiate the bike around and get it situated at an appropriate place: I used a piece of wood that I carry and placed it under the kickstand to prevent the motorcycle from sinking. Since the skies were still cloudy and we could have precipitation any time, I decided to activate with the radio set up in the top-box. I would be quickly able to close it to wait out any passing showers.

First CW activation of K-10077

The propagation was okay. I worked 40m, 30m and 20m and had decent contacts on all the bands! I was happy to have put this park on the map for CW operators. 

I had put in about 100 miles to get here and was going to milk it for all its worth. After Charlotte State Game Land, I headed over to Lake Interstate Game Land K-6715 and Windsor Township State Game Land K-10087 - another newish park that was added recently. By this time the risk of showers were diminished and I decided to relax a little on the activation instead of a stand-up activation by the motorcycle. Both these lands were by a little lake and provided a good view when activating. 

K-6715 Lake Interstate Game Land

K-10087 Windsor Township State Game Land

Today is the first time I had three game lands in a stretch! Usually I try to work one of them and then try to head to a State Park which have much better amenities. A major problem I noticed with today's sites were that they were right next to busy highways and made hearing the CW on the built-in speaker of the KX-3 difficult.  I was tired by the end of this sequence of activation. Despite this I was beaming all the way home... Great views and successful activation can melt your fatigue away