“We set our goal earlier this year to make or exceed the 1000 contacts for the club at Honeymoon Island state park sometime this year, and after all the great work this past Saturday, we blasted that goal out of the water!The following Kilo award is what any operator or club station earns once they have 1000 confirmed contacts at any particular POTA park. It’s not a cumulative 1000 contacts for the club at all parks, only for contacts made from a single park. So, thanks again to everyone for all the hard work in those challenging band conditions, for the setup and tear down, and to Tom for the diligent log hygiene and uploads.” – Ryan AF4O
Posts published in “UPARC in the Park”
On Saturday, April 29, 2023, UPARC members set out to Honeymoon Island State Park to operate in the field for a Parks on the Air (POTA) activation. Being a Florida State Park, Honeymoon Island is POTA park K-1880. Normally, this means we setup antennas and radios and sit back and work the pileups. But this day, the HF propagation gods took their time showing up. Initially, contacts were hard to come by on SSB. FT8 started off OK but 20m SSB was quite tough. But with perseverance, Team Luria (Charlotte KO4WNK and Joshua KO4VVX) made the majority of the SSB contacts with Olev KO4WUB and Rob WB4IFT making the FT8 contacts.
All total we worked 61 stations with 36 SSB … Read the rest
UPARC will again be activating Honeymoon Island State Park for a POTA activation on Saturday April 29th, 2023 starting at 8:00 AM.
Honeymoon Island State Park is POTA park K-1880 located at the end of the Dunedin Causeway. In case you have not been there before, there is a fee for each car to get into the park so carpooling with others would allow you to share the entrance fee. Pavilions are first come, first serve but we plan to get there early to grab a location with power. Ask on the club’s repeater (147.12 + PL 100 Hz) or on the club’s Slack channel. You can also look for all the antennas in the parking lot near … Read the rest
On Saturday, October 29th, UPARC had a very fun day at Honeymoon Island activating two club stations and making over 150 contacts as a Parks on the Air (POTA) activity. We had a great turnout of club members along with family and some visitors who had curiosity about ham radio which we took care to enthusiastically explain our wonderful hobby. The star visitor was a very sizable gopher tortoise that wandered close to our antenna guylines but eventually decided to high-tail it out of there (well, as fast a tortoise can go)! The weather was very nice and our pavilion (special thanks to Ray W8RD) had shade, tables and shore power along with a few mosquitoes, but we did not … Read the rest