wam bam thank you ham

,     My work took me up to the Boston area again this past week - I wasn't sure what the timing was going to be like, but I was able to head out to do another park activation!  I've been making it a goal to go to as many different parks as I can, since my work travel's get me all over the northeast.  I hadn't been up to Lowell National Historic Park yet, so that's where I pointed my Ford Fusion.  By the way, for anyone who remembers my car saga - the garage seems to have figured it out - I did the entire round trip from Lancaster to Boston and back again, with no troubles.  Thank goodness! (P.S. the car seems to make less RFI now than it did before the repair, and part of the problem was supposedly electrical issues with the throttle body....related maybe??) 
     I didn't have a lot of time, because Lowell was actually about an hour north of where I was staying.  Thinking back to my attempt at a quick activation before (remember my complete bust at Delaware Water Gap?), I wasn't sure if this was going to be worth the trip or not.  In the end - I'm glad I went!
     My first contact after getting parked was at 6:31pm.  My last contact was at 7:21pm.  I actually called it a night at that point, because part of my routine when I travel is to do a video chat with my little future operators back home and read them their bedtime stories.  I love ham radio, but I love them more!  Anyway, for those doing the math, that's 50 minutes.  I also took a break for about 5 minutes during that, because one of the contacts I made was with ham who was local to the area, so I told him to stop by and say hello.  It was awesome meeting someone in person that I made a contact with, while the radio was still warm from the contact!  All in all, that was about 45 minutes of actual operating time, during which I made 54 contacts!  Thats 1.2 contacts a minutes!  I know the big contesters easily double that, but I've never gone through that many, that fast.  Ever.  Wam, bam,  thank you ham!
     After I packed up and was waiting to start my evening call back home, another local ham that I contacted stopped by, and we talked about how he does his setup at the same park when he activates - there's a nice area at the back of the lot that has a couple trees, spaced just right for his dipole - awesome!
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     So even though this activation was short and unplanned, I consider it a complete success!  It was enough to motivate me to start planning a more challenging activation.  I'll likely have a couple more activation's like this one during the month of July, but for August I'm planning something special.  I'd tell you what it is, but I'm keeping it close to the chest because it's something that I think may be a first/record of some type, at least for NPOTA!  (Remember - I claim to be the first to have done a NPOTA activation using PSK31 while in motion - no one has disputed that yet as far as I know!)  
     Because of the success, I felt I deserved a reward....yum!

With this activation in the bag, I'm now tied with 32 other people for 171st out of 900 activators so far this year - go me!  

​Have a great 4th!