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