Tag Archives: Portable

Activities, Featured, General, On The Air

Next POTA Activation Mount Agamenticus Maine August 5th

Hi all our next SOTA/ POTA activation will be Mount Agamenticus in York Maine. A club member recommended this one to me. They have recently redone the parking areas at the base and up at the end of the auto road so i’m eager to check it out. here’s a link for directions to Mount Aggy.  on the right-hand column of that page, you will find a link to a map of Mount Aggy as well.

Parking is a bit different in Maine. They may have a way of paying cash but the way they talk about it on the website is via an app on your phone called Pango. I’ll try to get more info before the membership meeting on this.

My plan is to meet at 11:00 at the parking area at the summit. I used street view and couldn’t find picnic tables. But there was a lot of open space, So to have a comfortable spot to operate I would recommend bringing a folding chair and table to operate from. below is a pic i took of my operating position on Mount Kearsarge in June with my tripod for my antenna just in the corner of the pic.

I will likely bring the same radio I used on Mount  Kearsarge a qrp 6-meter rig. It was rough starting out but picked up later in the day.

I will put a reminder in the forums once this story hits the website, Any cancellations resulting from dangerous weather conditions (which we have had a lot of lately) will be in the forums. It is the quickest way to disseminate information besides email which you can certainly send me and I will email you the latest information at [email protected].

Hope to see you on Mount Agamenticus!

73′

Jim K1BRM

Activities, Featured, General

Junes POTA/SOTA Saturday June 10th and May’s POTA learnings

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Hi I before I talk about June’s SOTA/POTA I want to say a few things about May’s. IT was buggy in every sense of the word. I met Matt WE1H  at Mount Kearsarge last month for the club’s first SOTA. POTA activation of the year. My battery was giving me issues, and Matt’s radio was giving him issues. Matt let me borrow an extra battery and resolved his radio issue. So we are good to go, right? Wrong a throng of hungry black flies descended on us. We made the call pretty quickly that we couldn’t deal with them as neither of us remembered bug spray.

So while we both were bummed out about driving all the way over there for nothing we did learn a few important lessons. First, if you haven’t fired up that portable rig in a while. Give it a test and work out the bugs

Jamey AC1DC’s operating position on Mt. Kearsarge.

before heading out to operate portable. Iron out any battery or radio issues at home before you set up an antenna in the wild. This is a good time to check and make sure you have all the crazy RF adapters you might need for that portable rig too! And let’s not forget bug spray, head net, and a hat to keep the bugs off you.

Ok, with that out of the way for June’s activation, we will be back at Kearsarge. It’s really a great place to activate.

The plan for  Mt. Kearsarge activation is to meet at the picnic grounds at the end of the auto road Saturday at 11:00. I should be there till at least 4 so don’t worry if you can’t make it for 11:00 The physical address for Rollins State Park  (the location of the auto road) is 1066 Kearsarge Mountain rd. in Warner.  I just went to their website here and they recommend a reservation so plan on visiting the link for a pass.

Anyone that wants to hike up from the other side and meet us here is the physical address of Winslow State Park 475 Kearsarge Mountain Rd, Wilmot, NH 03287. Check The nhstateparks.org website you may need a parking reservation on this side of the mountain as well.

We will most likely be operating from the picnic area at the end of the auto road. If anyone wants to operate from the actual summit it is only .5 miles away. I’m not sure how long a hike it is from Winslow State Park. In addition to SOTA/POTA, the ARRL June VHF Contest starts at 2:00 local so there should be plenty of opportunities to make QSO’s.

As far as radios an HT with an upgraded rubber duck can get you surprising performance from even a modest rise in altitude, so if that’s all you have, bring it and try it out.  I’ll have my  6-meter QRP rig and a new homebrew Moxon antenna.

Hope to see you on Mount Kearsarge on Sunday!

PS Don’t forget to go to the state park website for a parking pass! It’s early in the season so you shouldn’t have a problem with them letting you up, but do you really wanna take the chance?

73′

Jim K1BRM

Activities, Featured, General

SOTA/POTA Hikes Start September 10th 2022

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GENERAL

Great news for fans of our SOTA / POTA hikes. If you made it to our August membership meeting then you already got the lowdown but for anyone that might have missed it then  I’ve got the schedule here for you and it begins in just a few short weeks.   Covid is mostly in our rear mirror so we can finally meet in groups and start having some fun.

Abby AB1BY portable operating from the summit

On September 10th we will be headed to Mount Kearsarge in Warner N.H. We plan on taking the auto road from Rollins State Park to 1066 Kearsarge Mountain Road. The 3 1/2 mile auto road terminates at a parking lot and picnic areas. Let’s plan to meet up in this parking lot at 10:00 am You can choose to operate here or hike a .5  mile to the summit. If you’re a purist you can start on the other side of the mountain at  Winslow State Park and hike the whole mountain with only modest effort and meet us. It is necessary to buy a parking pass and it is best to do this several days or a week ahead of time to ensure they don’t sell out. If they do you will be stuck at the bottom waiting for someone to come down as they only let a certain number of vehicles up at one time. Here is a link to the State of NH State Parks page where you can get the parking pass.

As far as operating from Kearsarge you can operate anything from an HT to the newest and best that is commercially offered or your own home-brewed rig. Seeing the range of what others brought is part of the fun of these activations. I’m bringing my MFJ qrp rig  I’ve run this rig before but haven’t had any luck yet so I’m hoping to have better luck this year.

Here is the rest of the SOTA / POTA scheduled for 2022

  • October 8 th   Pack Monadnock

Hope to see a lot of you on Kearsarge in a couple of weeks!

Jim Lajoie K1BRM

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide