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.
Besides working POTA contacts, one of the most fun aspects of these events is the chance to talk radio with friends. Having two radios setup, the rest of the time allows us to spend time with each other discussing various topics–radio and otherwise. As we were all watching some impending storms on the RADAR, the weather was a popular topic. We tore the site down around Noon and were leaving at 1:00PM. All in all, it was a fun day regardless of the HF and weather conditions.
