At Last

 As a POTA activator, I find their award system well designed.  I would like to think of myself as someone who does NOT care for awards. However, every time I upload logs to POTA the profile automatically gets updated with any awards you may have won. Every once in a while, I confess I do take a look at my profile and smile with satisfaction as the list of icons [listing the awards] keep growing. 

The author at Indiana Dunes National Park US-0765

While the awards may be a minor motivation, I keep myself amused by setting some goals for myself. For the longest time, I have wanted to activate a US National Park. The thing that made it a little challenging was that there was no national parks close to me (or so I thought). I recently had an opportunity to travel to Grand Teton National Park [and Yellowstone as well]. I took my KH-1 hoping to nab one of them. However an equipment malfunction meant that I fell one contact shy of bagging my first national park. 

As part of the above visit, I had purchased the annual pass that is good at at all National Parks. This weekend, I had a travel coming up in Chicago. I usually activate one of the numerous Michigan State Parks on the way. However, when I looked at the maps I saw that what was formerly called Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is now Indiana Dunes National Park. Hey it seemed to have happened sometime around 2019; so I'm only about 5 years behind. This might be my opportunity to nab my first national park. I packed my KX-3 for the trip [the KH-1 is back at Elecraft for repairs]. I dedicated about an hour and a half for the activation. I made sure that other family members had other activities on the lakeshore while I focused on the activation. They set out for a walk along the beach, while I was going to play radio. This is part of the lesson learnt from the failed activation attempt linked in the previous paragraph. 

The weather was perfect; sunny and in the mid 60s [about 14C]. I went to the Porter lake [Wabash Road] site in the park. The beach was busy; but fortunately it was easy to find parking. We walked a short distance to the beach and had a quick lunch. After the lunch, while the family took a walk, I situated myself in a smallish dune with a little bit of shade. I set up my whip antenna; hooked up my KX-3 and started calling CQs. I was happy to note that the bands were in good shape. I breathed a sigh of relief, when I got my 10 calls for the activation. In all I got about 16 calls in about 35 minutes. When the pace of  calls died down, I quickly put out QRTs and joined my family in their walk along the beach. I also managed to climb a few dunes to justify the fantastic lunch we had earlier.

It was great fun! In addition to being my first national park activation, this also happened to my 50th unique park. Combined with the great fun we had as a family on the lakeshore; it made it one of my memorable activations to date.

Hope to catch you on the air!