As special thanks to Steve Behr, K4OPZ, for allowing me to tag along this past Saturday for SC POTA activations. It was a blast! I’ve never activated a park before so this was a new experience. Steve was an excellent Elmer. He showed me his equipment, told me why he chose them, how he sets them up, and about some of the rules of activation. We were up and running in about 10 minutes and he made the first contact. Then he gave the mic to me! I had a momentary laps of “oh shoot, now what do I do” moment. After that, the rest of the contacts were easy.
Our first stop was K-9199, Hatchery and Wildlife Management Area. We both had 20 QSOs in 30 minutes. Including a station out of Cuba. Our second stop was a 2 fer. Park K-3910, Santee Cooper WMA, and park K-9203, The Palmetto Trail. They were both wild life reserves. We were introduced to the South Carolina state bird, the mosquito! Boy were they big. Bug spray helped a little. They were so bad, even the deer hunters that were there gave up! We both made 18 QSOs, or is that 36 for both parks? Our last park was K-0521, Santee National Wildlife Refuge. Only got 11 QSOs as it was getting hot and the bands were fading. We did make contact with an op out of Spain on 15 meters though before we called it a day.
All in all, a great day. Thank you again to again for letting me tag along and for showing me the ropes for POTA activation. I greatly appreciate it. I can see POTA activations in my future!
