Another successful POTA outing on Saturday May 24th for George AD5CQ, Jayant KG5LJZ, and John AB5SS.
Soapbox
from KG5LJZ
It was a beautiful Saturday morning on the 3 day memorial day weekend 2025 and the members pf W5RRR convened at US -3511 – San Jacinto State Park to activate POTA.George got their first and had his antenna and the 17m band humming away on digital modes. John and Jayant decided to get their antenna further away (even though they planned to activate 20m) and used the handy table to set up the ICOM 7300 in the parking lot away from the picnic shelter. They also used a vertical antenna. Initially the SWR was not good and John diagnosed that to a faulty COAX end effector. We quickly borrowed a coax from George, checked SWR and got on a 2 operator SSB POTA on 14.274 MHz.George was making good progress on FT8 and we were having a pile up on SSB. In literally 17 minutes we had the required 10 (we had 11 QSOs – an extra one for safety). We continued plowing along and getting more QSOs and enjoying the beautiful morning. At 38 QSOs we decided to take a break and visit with George. We went over to the pavilion and chatted with him. Jayant got back to the radio and started working CW – took a while to figure out how to unlock the frequency lock on an ICOM but once we got that we were able to get a few 2 CW QSOs. It was the WW CW contest and most stations were working the contest (at super high speeds). Then John decided that he would give Jayant a tutorial on Digital Modes. We got the computer set up as well as the radio and John got a few FT8 and no FT4 stations. It was getting hot and rain clouds were beginning to accumulate. As we were going along it started to train – We quickly got the electronics into the car and disconnected the antenna and after a quick farewell to George left the park.Overall it was a great time and good learning.PS – John went home and tested the faulty coax cable (?) and found it to work well. Question now is if there is a issue with Jayant’s vertical antenna at the attach point. More to come.In this hobby you are ALWAYS learning!!!
from John AB5SS
It was a great POTA outing for sure. I logged 35 SSB, 2 FT8, 1 FT4, and 1 CW QSO’s on 20m. Jayant’s setup worked well, getting good reports from all over. And we seemed to have a pipeline to GA & TN. CW was a challenge due to the WPX CW contest…very few POTA ops on 20m CW. But we worked N5BO (prolific POTA activator) who activated 8 parks that day!The coax cable issue was perplexing. I remember we ran into the same issue when we first set up Jayant’s antenna out at JSC and switching to my coax cable resolve it. The problem is the PL-259 will not screw all the way down on the SO-238 connector, so not mating the way it should (shield part of 259 will not touch the SO-238). But when I took Jayant’s cable home and tried it on my JPC-12, it worked fine, fully mated and screwed all the way down. So, need to look at the SO-238 on Jayant’s antenna and see what’s up.George’s setup was doing a good job on 17m. Don’t remember how many he racked up.We wrapped up just as it was starting to rain. Great timing!-AB5SS
Amazing POTA – I learned a lot.