In January of 2024 I squeezed in a 5-day trip to Florida's east coast. I planned to see the sights while operating portable HF (high-frequency) radio at several Florida state parks. I like to participate as an activator in the Parks on the Air (POTA) program. As often happens with trip planning, the actual trip turned out differently than what my plan called for. My secondary goal was to activate parks only on or near the water. It had been a years since I visited Florida's east coast. All my stops were designed to give me something nice to look at while making contacts with hams around the country. When I'm the activator at a park, the folks who call me are called hunters. The goal is to get at least 10 hunters to contact me while I'm in the park. Ham radio operators all over the world do this. This gets me out of the (radio) shack and into the outdoors as Tracy, VE3TWM likes to say on his YouTube channel Outdoors on the Air. Thanks, Tracy, for the motivation to do just that!
My first stop on this trip was near West Palm Beach. I set up right on the beach at John D. McArthur Beach State Park. My Florida State Parks pass saved me the $4 daily use fee, and I was well on my way to making that purchase pay for itself. The beach itself was a .67 mile walk from where I parked the van.
Walk to the Beach
While the walk
to the beach was calm and beautiful, the beach itself was very windy. I had one false start putting up my ground-mounted
Wolf River vertical. The wind blew it over! Since I brought no paracord or rope of any kind, I had to improvise. I spotted a post sticking out of the sand that hosted a lifesaving ring. Since there was nobody in the water, I took the risk and used that post to prop up my antenna.
My next challenge was to find a place to sit. I still had not perfected a way to bring radio, antenna, and a lightweight chair, but I did have a blue tarp with me to use as a seat. Once again, the wind was probably blowing at 20-25 mph, so I needed a way to block it. My operating position turned out to be in a small indentation similar to the foxholes we would pretend to use as kids playing "war". Crude, but it worked just well enough to make the activation possible.
View looking down into the foxhole
This was my first time using the new
G90 rig to operate in a POTA park. I had practiced in my driveway on New Year's Day, but conditions on the beach were much more challenging. I managed to get everything hooked up and running within a few minutes of settling into the foxhole. Now, it was time to fire up the radio and see if anyone was on the air. I also was curious to see if the "
saltwater effect" was really a thing. I had read about how saltwater acts like an amplifier for radio waves. I later witnessed
Walt - K4OGO operating near the Atlantic near Norfolk, Virginia where he features portable operating on his YouTube channel,
Coastal Waves and Wires. Now it was time to try this out for myself.
Well, it seems that this little physics trick actually works. Signals were coming in very strong, and the reports I received from those I contacted were all very good -- 579 to 599, which is as good as it gets. I used my brand new
CWMorse Outdoor Pocket Single Paddle Iambic Key to send the code. I just held it in my lap next to a legal pad which I used to copy down the callsigns I worked on the air. I've always used a straight key to send Morse Code. Another one of my goals for this trip was to practice using a "keyer" while also increasing my sending and receiving speed. I clearly need more practice, but I managed to log 18 CW contacts from the foxhole within maybe 30 minutes from when I first called CQ POTA. Now, it was time to pack up and walk back to the van so I could move north to the next park.
Walking back the way I came
My overstuffed backpack
I had left my home on the west coast of Florida early that morning. By the time I drove nearly 4 hours across the center of the state and did my first activation on the beach it was time for dinner and a good night's sleep. Night #1 would be spent at the Cracker Barrel in West Palm Beach. Florida has more Cracker Barrels than any other state in the United States, and I've stayed in many of them. I always call ahead to inquire as to whether they have overnight parking for RVs. So far, all of them have been able to accommodate me. Once I arrive and get settled for the night I either buy my dinner or my breakfast the next morning. I don't think it's right to just use their parking lot as a free camp sight, so I come as a customer and spend my money for a homestyle meal. During a trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway in summer 2022 I even purchased a Cracker Barrel shirt! So, I guess I'm a CB fanboy.
My spot for the night
I counted twelve RVs spending the night with me
First time I've seen a cartop tent in a CB parking lot!
For this trip I ate dinner in the camper and enjoyed a hot breakfast inside Cracker Barrel the next morning. Then, it was off to the next town north and three more parks to activate. One was a two-fer, or two parks that overlap which allows me to log two parks for one activation. As I learned later, that activation was also a rerun. More on that discovery in my next installment.
