With only 1 month to go in the ARRL NPOTA event and some free time this Thanksgiving weekend, Fred and I decided to hit the road to activate some new parks.    We activated two nearby parks, each less than 1 hour away from our home,  Lamprey Wild and Scenic River,  WR23, near Epping, NH, and Minuteman National Historical Park, HP27, near Concord, MA.    There were close to 900K QSOs made overall in the NPOTA program as of Thanksgiving day and we also wanted to help the cause to get to 1Million NPOTA QSOs by year’s end.

On Saturday, we drove to Epping, NH, where we activated Lamprey Wild and Scenic River.   It was a rainy day, but we still enjoyed the scenic drive along the river.  We drove along the river until we found a place by the river to park and operate.  The bands were not great, with a K-index of 4 and a high A-index.  Despite the conditions, our activation was a success.  We operated on both 20m and 40m SSB and made a total of 307 QSOs over 3 hours.

I work in Burlington, MA and often travel between Burlington and Waltham, MA for meetings.  Each time I passed by Lexington on I-95 I saw the sign for Minute Man NHP and thought it would be fun to do an NPOTA activation from there.  We activated the park on Saturday. We entered the park from the Concord, MA end and were pleasantly surprised to see some nice countryside in the middle of a suburban area of Massachusetts, not far from Boston.

We operated from a parking lot in the park from mid-afternoon until dark.  The bands were a little better on Saturday and we were able to get 239 contacts into the log, mostly the US but also worked stations from Spain, Jamaica, Aruba and Puerto Rico.

We have enjoyed activating 8 National parks so far in the NPOTA event.  We are planning another activation between Christmas and New Years of multiple parks before the end of the event on December 31.

Anita, AB1QB