How Grand

     First things first - I'd like to thank all of you (you know who you are!) for helping me accumulate 60 contacts over a couple of evenings while operating portable from Grand Haven State Park in Michigan!
​     A few weeks back someone asked me what kinds of things I'd be up to when NPOTA ended (last I checked I ended up in a multi-way tie for 90th out of over 1,400 activators - I'll wear being in the top 100 with a badge of honor!)  Well, even though NPOTA is over now that we're into 2017, I still have to travel for work, and I wanted to keep playing radio while I traveled.  Enter "World Wide Flora and Fauna" or WWFF for short.  For those of you not in the know, this is an international program that is very similar to NPOTA, but it is on-going, kind of like SOTA or IOTA.

     My work was taking me to Grand Rapids, MI so I did my standard "park hunt" to decide where to operate (I wrote about how I pick a place to activate a while back.)  I ended up deciding on Grand Haven State Park (Unit KFF-1499) which sits right on Lake Michigan.  I stayed in what they call the "Modern Lodge" which is really just a ranch style house that sits on the edge of their property:

     This was an awesome place to stay, because it was in the park, it was comfortable, and for goodness sake, you can rent an entire house for the same nightly cost as staying in a chain hotel!  The only catch is that you have to clean up after yourself (vacuum, strip beds, etc.) when you leave.  If I had gone in the summer, I would probably have camped in the park, but because the view of the park's lighthouse sometimes looks like this in the winter:

I decided that staying inside a heated building was just fine by me!  I did get lucky, and the weather was fairly nice.  For antenna's, I used my Buddipole, in various configurations.  On 20 meters I set it up as a V antenna (should I have called the opposite of an inverted V a verted V?) and I also set it up as an elevated vertical using some of my wire as 2 elevated, quarter wave radials.  On 40 meters I used the Buddipole mast and it's feedpoint, but used my wire dipole (I gave some details on that in this post.)  On 80 meters I did a hodgepodge arrangement - on each side I used an antenna arm, a coil, and my 40 meter wire, and I tuned it by adjusting taps on the coils.  My biggest antenna takeaways from this trip:

• Sand gets everywhere
• It's nice to have a portable mast when there arn't trees within the range your coax can reach
• I need more coax in my portable kit so that I can reach further to be able to use "that big tree" that's just out of reach
• Sand gets everywhere
• Frozen ground can be hard to drive stakes etc. into, but it can also help make sand hard enough to actually hammer stakes into
• Sand gets everywhere

     Even though the sand outside was a little messy to work in (did I mention that sand gets everywhere?) when I wasn't fiddling with the antenna, I had a very nice temporary "shack" set up in the back bedroom, complete with a cushioned adirondak chair to lounge in while I operated.

     I operated mostly voice (46 contacts over the 2 evenings when I got to operate) but also did some digital modes (14 contacts).  I had 2 highlights here - My very first THOR contact was the first highlight.  My second highlight was way cooler, even though it wasn't even something that most would consider a success:
     I "almost" had my first ever CW contact thanks to W6LEN!  Whenever I have posted on the book of faces that I was going to be doing an activation, W6LEN always asks "are you doing any CW?" and I have always answered "Maybe, if I get up the nerve - I've been practicing but haven't made any contacts on the air."  Well, this time peer pressure finally got me, and I attempted to make a CW contact on the air.  Once I got past the technical hurdle of figuring out how to send CW with the microphone of my 857d (hint: e-mail me if you want to try this, it's not as intuitive as it seems it should be) I made the call, at a very shaky 5wpm:
W6LEN de N3VEM
....and.....I heard code coming back, nice and slow!!!  I copied W6 and then it got wiped out by someone sending right on top really loud, and much faster than I could copy.  I hope it was a mistake, and not someone being a LID and purposefully interfering with a newbie attempt at CW.....
     Anyway, I made the call again, and this time I copied the W, then the loud interrupter broke in again (seeming less like a mistake now...), and I managed to copy an E and a W in between the interrupting dits and dahs.  At one point I also hear my own call coming back to me, but couldn't copy who was sending it thanks to these kind interruptions (how grand...) - I'm sure it was W6LEN, but I didn't log it because it didn't "feel" right since I couldn't technically be sure, because I didn't copy the whole call sign at any point.

     So, with all that said, I now have a mission before my next trip:  practice copying a bunch, grow some stones, get my hands on a key and officially include CW in my next activation!  I have some bits of metal, and I'm sure some bits of spring in my garage somewhere.  I also know for a fact I have some quarter inch plugs and wire....hmmm...maybe another project and related blog post is in order....

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