One Oh Oh; Twice Over

My 100th successful POTA activation:

I've had a busy summer activating nearby parks. As the number of activations were growing, I was looking forward to my 100th successful activation.  (I have had one failure to date). I have always wanted to do something special for the 100th one. After looking at parks nearby me and some of the stats, I settled on K-1513: Mike Levine Lakelands Trail State Park. This is not a park in the traditional sense. It is basically an equestrian and biking trail that winds its way for a little over 30 miles along an old railroad track. It has a mix of paved and unpaved portions and traverses several counties. I chose this park because:

• I have never activated it
• It seems to have had fewer activations
• It was conveniently located and fit my plans for the rest of the day

I had a few vacation days to burn before the end of the year. Today's weather was going to be tolerable. As much as I would have liked to ride my motorcycle for the activation, my plans to combine with other errands meant that I had to use my automobile. 

My goal for the 100th was to activate a new (to me) park and get at least 100 QSOs. I have never cracked a 100 QSO activation yet.

I chose the trailhead parking at Hamburg township. There were off and on sprinkles on the way to the park, but when I reached there, it was just cloudy.  I carefully backed up my SUV and positioned in such a way that I can perform the activation on the back of the SUV with the hatch opened. By now my experience slinging the arborist line meant I had the random-wire antenna up and functional in a few minutes.

Hatchback activation

There was a minor problem. The lamp on the hatch stayed on and did not have a cut off switch [NOTE: This is an older vehicle that uses incandescent bulbs and not LEDs] . This was going to drain my batteries! So I had to unscrew the housing and pull the harness off the lamp to conserve the vehicle battery. 

I got started at around 1600 UTC.  I realized that the bands were in good shape. I worked 17m, 20m, 30m, 40m on CW and 20m and 40m on SSB. Once I reached the 100 mark, I was hoping for a lull in hunters; but they kept on coming until I had about 132 QSOs in three and a half hours. I realized during the QSOs that this was a needed park for quite a few hunters who were thankful. I ended up getting my first POTA SSB DX from Italy; not bad for 7W indicated by my radio. I also had one other CW DX from France for the day. The band was getting progressively better, but the temperatures were falling and I had errands to run. So I took the first lull in hunters to QRT and head on with the other tasks for the day; but not before reconnecting and installing the lamp on the hatch!

Shameless brag:

Screenshot showing 100 activations

Screenshot showing 132 QSOs for activation

I had great fun today and was glad to have accomplished the goals. I look forward to my 100th unique park in the future, but I am not sure if it will surpass the excitement of today. Hope to catch you on the air soon

73