Thursday, January 4, 2024

POTA outing with the DigiBox

With the extended Christmas break, I had an opportunity to head out to Martin Creek Lake State Park (K-3036) for a POTA activation. I used my revamped DigiBox and my homebrew EFHW antenna. The weather was perfect with clear sunny skies and about 63 degrees outside. It was very comfy in the sunshine! 

I found a covered picnic table near the lake and setup my equipment. I extended my 21-foot collapsible fishing pole and used a rod holder stuck in the ground about 40 feet out from the picnic table to hold it, basically creating a sloper antenna.  

Over all, it worked very well! I made just over 36 FT8 contacts in about an hour and a half. I found the bottleneck on on working contacts was my own clumsiness in clicking stations! Typically, my signal reports were about 10db to 15db below the reporting stations, which I felt pretty good about considering I was running about 4w and the bands were FULL of station.