National Parks Activations Part 2 - Russell Cave National Monument

After a month or so of planning, the family and I finally managed to get out and visit two of the National Parks that are reasonably close to home.  My last post talked about Russell Cave National Monument and Little River National Preserve.  Our original plans were to go to Natchez Trace Parkway (PK04) and Shiloh National Military Park (MP08).  After some discussion, we all decided to go to Little River and then Russell Cave.  A couple of days before the trip, a ham friend of mine contacted me and was going to be arriving at the DeSoto State Park campground on the same evening of our trip.  He wanted to meet up and purchase some repeater stuff from me and since he lives in South Alabama I decided that we would go to Russell Cave first and then move onto Little River in order to accommodate meeting up with him. 

On the day of the trip I had intended on getting up, waking everyone up, and being on the road by 7:00 AM.  In typical Wright fashion, it didn't happen.  Originally, it was going to be me, my wife, my kids and my mom.  As it turns out, my sister and her clan came down from Tennessee for the weekend and joined us.  We wound up taking three carloads of people plus all of our picnic stuff and, of course, all of the radio stuff.

Sign at the park Entrance

The kids taking in the sights.

We arrived at the park around 10:15 AM.  We went to the park office and talked with the ranger on duty, walked through the small museum and exhibit area, and walked to the mouth of the cave and the cave shelter. 

Official NPS Park Stamp

Once we had toured the park and exhibits we decided to find a place to setup.  Of course all of us didn't have the same agenda here.  I was getting ready to setup my radio stuff and start making contacts.  Most everyone else was more interested in setting up a table with food from all of the picnic baskets.

I guess my setup could have been put together a little better because it took me about 30 minutes to get everything up and running.  Some assembly required.  Honestly, I meant to hook all of it up out in the yard at home but I never managed to get around to it.  Anyway, I got everything hooked up and running.  I grabbed my phone to post a "spot" on the National Parks on the Air Facebook page as well as DXSummit. I spotted myself on 20M and my phone promptly died from a dead battery.  I called for several minutes on 20M with no results.  I switched to 40M and began calling but I didn't have high hopes since I had no way of spotting myself.  After a few minutes of calling, someone FINALLY answered my call. I was so shocked that I stumbled over my words.  I got a few spots on the DX cluster and some other people started calling.  The contacts were slow to come but over the course of about 20 minutes I managed to work 10 stations. At this point, we decided to pack up and head up to Little River.  After speaking with the ranger again for a few minutes, we were on our way.

Honestly, radio from this park is pretty challenging.  The park is pretty much in the bottom of a bowl and any direction you look is up.  I definitely learned a lot on this activation and will keep those points in mind for future activations.  I know the park has had 15 activations and a little over 2500 QSOs so while it isn't extremely rare, I know a lot of people still need to put it in their log.  Ironically, I still don't have it in my log.  I have a good bit of vacation coming up in the next couple of months and I am thinking I will probably do at least one more activation there.  Hopefully, I can get it in my log too. 

Next...  National Parks Activations Part 3 - Little River National Preserve

National Parks Activations!

Well, So far we haven't made it over to Rhodes Ferry Park to activate TR12 - The Trail of Tears but that's OK, we are going to activate two other parks this coming weekend.  This weekend, we are going to head out early and drive over to DeKalb County and activate Russell Cave National Monument - MN64.  Our plan is to be there by 10:30 AM local time (15:30 UTC) and get setup and operate for a couple of hours.  While we are there, we are planning to walk through the Visitor Center, have a picnic lunch, and maybe take a walk down to the cave shelter. Once we are done there, we will be heading over to Little River Canyon - PV12.  Hopefully, we will be there by 15:00 local time (20:00 UTC) and get setup and operate a couple of hours or so. 



My plans are to take my Yaesu FT-847, MFJ-949E Tuner, a laptop, coax, some miscellaneous stuff and my home-brew end-fed antenna.  I am also taking a 12 deep-cycle battery, a solar panel, and a solar charge controller.  Hopefully, I can operate the amount of time I have planned with this setup.  Even though I only have a 10 watt solar panel, my hopes are that it will provide enough oomph to keep the battery going.  I had really hoped to test all of this at Rhodes Ferry park which is close to home but everyone else thought it would be more interesting to go somewhere new.

More on the antenna...   Basically, the antenna is an end-fed wire with a 9-to-1 matching transformer to match the impedance to 50 ohms.  Because of the likelihood of restrictions of hanging antenna wires in trees and keeping my setup footprint as small as possible, I am using a 24.5 ft wire.  I'm not sure exactly how I'll have all of it setup but we'll figure something out when we get there.  I am also taking a tripod that extends up to seven or eight feet.  If all else fails, I can do a sloper from ground level to the top of the tripod.  I need to go by Lowes and see if I can find a fiberglass painter's pole cheap.  I could use that with the tripod to setup the antenna as a vertical, or at least close to vertical.  Again, we'll just have to see.  I actually have a 51 ft wire in my go-box but I really doubt it will see any use.  I'm sure the performance would be better but it would require a good bit of room to setup.

The picture on the left is a view of the inside of the balun box for my portable antenna.  The picture on the right is on view of the finished product.




Hopefully I'll make lots of contacts and the family will have fun as well.  I'll be sure to get lots of pics of the setup and even the parks themselves.  Look for some of the pics to show up here in the next post.

73 for now,

Jamey - WR4JW

Welcome to the WR4JW Ham Radio Pages.  Look for all kinds of topics in the future.  I have no idea where this will go but I figured I would give it a shot. I need to do something at the computer at night and on the weekends besides playing Mahjong. 

My current Ham Radio activity is chasing activators at National Parks during the ARRL National Parks on the Air Event.  I only started chasing activators in July but so far I have managed to confirm 100 parks.  This has been a really fun event and I have met a lot of new people on the air. 

In the near future, my family and I plan to make a few road trips and activate a few National Parks.  We are going to start with The Trail of Tears (NPS Unit TR12).  We are going to activate this unit at Rhodes Ferry Park in Decatur.  The Trails in the National Park System can be activated if you are within 1/4 of a mile of the original trail route.  The Tennessee River was one of the routes of the Trail of Tears and as ou can see in the photo, the park is sufficiently close to qualify.    We are just waiting on the weather to cooperate a little more.  It is tough to be outside during the midday to afternoon hours in Alabama this time of year.  Even though it is mid-September, daytime temps are still 90-91 degrees and about 90% humidity.

The National Park activation  at Rhodes Ferry will be a trial run since this will be the first portable operation I have done.  Rhodes Ferry Park is on 20-30 minutes from home and is in the same county I reside in.  It is actually in the same city I work in (Decatur, AL) so I may do a few quick afternoon activations as well.  Once I am sure my setup will work, we are planning to activate several other parks that are within a reasonable driving distance.  Those parks are:

Russell Cave National Monument - MN64
Little River Canyon National Preserver - PV12
Natchez Trace Parkway - PK04
Brice's Crossroads National Battlefield Site - BS01
Shiloh National Military Park - MP08
Stones River National Battlefield - BF09
Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail - TR16

I thought about trying the Manhattan Project Historical Park - HP50 at the site in Tennessee at Oak Ridge National Labs but I am not sure about this one.  I would love to visit the site but since the ARRL NPOTA page has this marked as an "Extremely Sensitive Unit" I have reservations about trying to activate it.  I may attempt to contact other hams that have done activations there and see what they have to say.

Enough for now.  There are parks to be contacted.

73,
Jamey - WR4JW