Parks on the Air Activation at K-11078 John Alva Fuson, MD State Conservation Area on March 9, 2024
The Park
No, it’s not in Maryland. The “MD” refers to John Alva Fuson, MD, the doctor after whom the Conservation Area was named. It seems that Dr. Fuson practiced medicine in the area for many years, so, in his memory, his daughter left funds in her estate to purchase the land. It is quite a large tract, 1,534 acres, or nearly 621 hectares, in size. A few caves are on the land, although they are currently closed to the public. Much of the land is heavily wooded, with several trails running through it. We entered at the back entrance of the tract and started walking down one of the trails, carrying our gear. Soon, we came to a small clearing, where we decided to set up.
The Site
The location we chose was very nice. I set up just to the side of the trail. We were right on the edge of a small clearing to our north, with heavily wooded territory to our south. There were plenty of trees nearby where I could hang the antenna, but it wasn’t so shady that I didn’t get any sunshine. It was a beautiful day. It was a bit chilly earlier in the day, but it did warm up as the day progressed.
Setting Up
The process of setting up for an activation is becoming familiar. This time, however, there were a couple of changes. We walked for a little while to get to our setup location, so I carried the gear with me. Not having the car meant setting up the radio a bit differently. Instead of leaving it on the ground like I did when I had to hike into K-10215, this time I brought a small folding table and set the radio on that. The table worked extremely well, and I enjoyed experimenting with a different arrangement.
The second major difference in my gear today is the use of the Lenovo Windows 11 laptop for logging. I used it in conjunction with World Radio League’s online logging platform for all my logging today. The laptop functioned very well, although, being new, World Radio League still has a few quirks that make it a bit unhandy for POTA. It is still very much in development and I have placed several feature requests and bug reports with the team, and I believe they have responded to each one quite quickly.
Thankfully, the RG-316 coax deployed easily this time, and I got my antenna connected and in the tree pretty quickly. Soon, I had my spot posted on the pota.app/ page and began calling CQ.
The Activation
This was my most successful activation up to this point. As I called CQ, I mentioned on the air and in the POTA spot that this was a new park. I don’t know if that helped or not, but very soon, as I called “QRZ,” I was greeted with a blur of sound and able to pick out only a few characters here and there. These pileups happened probably two or three times during the activation, and it was a blast working through them. Congratulations go to W9AV for being the first-ever hunter of K-11078. Propagation seemed to be great, especially to the east. I broke my previous POTA record, logging 77 contacts before leaving the park. We had decided to visit another park that day, and we also needed to grab lunch, so before it got too late, we packed up the gear and headed back to the car. Another activation in the books. The second activation of the day will be in the following field report.
73
My Gear for this activation:
Xiegu G90 with cooling fan
1/4” Yellow Polypropylene Twist Rope with home brew throw bag
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 with World Radio League online logging
Home brew 20 meter dipole
50′ RG-316 coax with BNC Crimp Connectors
Ozark Trail Folding Chair
Small Folding Table