We had a very memorable club meeting last evening. Tom Gallagher NY2RF, CEO of the ARRL and Dave Patton NN1N were our speakers. Tom and Dave talked with us about their plans for the future of the ARRL and our hobby. Their plans include:
Initiatives to bring young people and new folks into our hobby
Plans for electronics oriented education and training
Social Media enhanced information sharing within the Amateur Radio community
These goals align well with the work that our club has been doing over the past 18 months.
13 Colonies Top Club Award Presentation
We also used this opportunity to recognize the members of our club who operated as K2K New Hampshire in the Thirteen Colonies Special Event this year. Their efforts made our club the Top Club in the event this year, making over 9,700 contacts.
Abby Finchum Presenting our Youth Outreach Plans
Abby Finchum KC1FFX, her Dad Jamey KC1ENX, and Brian Smigielski AB1ZO have been working on a project to interest young people in Amateur Radio. Abby did a nice presentation of their plans and asked for folks to volunteer to help us.
Members and Guests at our Meeting
We invited several other clubs in New Hampshire and Massachusetts to join us for our meeting. Our club had a good turnout for the meeting.
Our Thanks to Tom Gallagher and Dave Patton
We ended our meeting by thanking Tom and Dave for taking the time to come to talk about where the ARRL and Amateur Radio are headed. Their plans and work to keep our hobby strong and to evolve the ARRL into the future are very much appreciated by the Amateur Radio community and by our club.
Ever since we built our Mobile HF Station, we’ve talked about taking it to Acadia National Park in Maine and operating from the top of Cadillac Mountain. The 2016 ARRL NPOTA event gave us the motivation to plan the trip for the week before Labor Day. The week before our trip, we saw an article in the ARRL Letter encouraging operation from the newly declared National Monument, Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, which had just be designated as NPOTA MN84. Visiting the NPS website, we learned that the park is only a 2 1/2 hour drive from Bar Harbor, where we are staying. We decided to accept the challenge to be the first to activate the new park.
Our F150 Mobile Station at the entrance to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument
Tuesday, August 30 was our first full day of vacation, we left our hotel room and parked by the Acadia visitor center and called “CQ National Parks”. We ended up with 76 contacts in the log from NP01.
After that we got on the road and headed toward Katahdin Woods and Waters, activating counties along the way including the county line between Penobscot and Aroostook Counties.
NPS Map of the Park
As a newly designated National Monument, Katahdin Woods and Waters does not yet have a visitors center or any signs showing you when you enter and exit the park. We just had the map (above) to determine where the park boundaries were. All of the roads in black on the map are gravel roads that are also used for logging trucks.
Entrance to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument
We entered the park from Swift Brook Road off Rt 11 in the lower right corner of the map. We drove through the lower section by the entrance and then headed north along the Eastern Branch of the Penobscot River and operated near the Loos camping area. The sign above confirmed that we were within the park boundaries.
Scenic View of Katahdin Woods and Waters NM
The scenery along the river was beautiful with views of the mountains in the distance.
Operating at MN84
We started operating on 20m and the pileups were huge! Everyone was excited to get this new NPOTA into the log. Fred, AB1OC/M ended up going split on 20m due to the size of the pile-ups. After a while, he moved to 40m to give the close in folks a chance at MN84. We went back and further between 20m and 40m until the pile-ups thinned out. We also made 18 QSOs with the club callsign N1FD to also give the club credit for the activation. We really enjoyed activating the park and the people we talked to were great! We made a total of 350 QSOs from MN84.
Activating MN84 for the first time was truly a memorable experience. We enjoyed it so much we will be back on Saturday to give more NPOTA chasers a chance at MN84! Hope to talk to you on the air!
Our Summer Family Picnic is scheduled for Saturday, August 27th at Greeley Park in Nashua. All club members and their family members are invited. This will be a potluck lunch and members are encouraged to bring a dish. I have created a sign-up sheet. You can view it here.
Please edit this sheet to indicate whether you will attend, how many family members including yourself will attend, and what you will bring.
We will start to gather around 10:00 am and lunch will be served at noon. Directions can be found on the club event calendar.
The rain date will be Sunday, August 28. If there is inclement weather in the forecast for Saturday, stay tuned to our Forums for updates.
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