My first POTA activation

2025-12-11

POTA and SOTA are two of the reasons that made me get my license.

This is a bit of a write-up of how I got my first POTA activation, some lessons learned and future plans.

First weekend of December was a long one here where I live, with Monday off and I also got Friday as I had to "burn" some PTO days before the end of the year.

At this point in time, I've only got my license for 2 weeks. I don't have a permanent station, nor plans to have it. This is for various reasons like cost, location, etc (I may talk about all that in the future). That means I operate either portable or I'm doing some precarious experiment on my balcony.

My "rig" is a tiny QRP Labs QMX and whatever crappy antenna I can build. I don't have a mic (yet) and my CW skills are non-existent (although I'm working on that). That leaves only digital modes.

In those 2 weeks I was able to make a handful of contacts on FT8 and did some experiments with an EFHW resonant on 20m and 10m, Bal-Un(s), counterpoises ...

A couple of days before that long weekend, I noticed that the limits of one of the parks included in the POTA program is really close to my place. So close in fact, I could walk there in about 40min and be inside the park. I could even have a nice spot if I walked 1h or so.

As I know the area quite well and had Monday morning all to myself, I decided to give a POTA activation a try. I thought it would be feasible, as FT8's efficiency makes things easier. On the other hand, being limited to 2 bands and one mode was a handicap.

I took it as a fun experiment and went for it.

I got to the park around 9AM UTC and started looking for a quiet spot (it was a national holiday close to Christmas, so I expected some people hiking and biking in the area). I knew the general area where I wanted to deploy the antenna, kind of a wide "saddle" between two hills which leaves a wide open space on 2 sides.

After some walking around, I found a small clearing in the forest out of the main paths. That meant I could set up without worrying about antenna placement so people would not step into it.

Did a couple of tests with a NanoVNA to see if the EFHW was resonant where I wanted it to be and what SWR it would have on those frequencies (basically 28.074kHz and 14.074kHz). I ended up with an inverted L configuration using a cheap telescopic mast (it's a fishing rod really) and a nearby tree. I put a 0.05 * λ length counterpoise in "oposition" to the inverted L and connected a coax to the feed point with a choke on it. The choke is composed of 5 ferrite beads inline, and the RG316 does a loop on each of them (so "2 turns" each). This is a configuration I found that is convenient and provides enough attenuation for common mode currents on the outer shield. For the non-scientific tests I can make, it attenuates the signal around 30dB.

With that, I got around 1.4:1 SWR both on 20m and 10m. I could have tweaked it a bit more, as I know it can go below that figure, but it was getting late. Also, for some reason I still don't understand, I had to shorten the radiating element (folding it back into itself) quite a bit when I put the counterpoise. Way shorter than the theoretical λ/2. In any case, the readings on the NanoVNA were stable and "good enough" for this test.

Then I set up my spot as confortable as one can be sitting on the ground, arranged the radio and laptop, prepared my loggnig software (and paper backup !) and started calling CQ on 10m. I spotted myself on the POTA website, but I don't know if it went through, as phone coverage is not great in that part of the park. In any case, I saw later than the RBN had spotted me. That's because I had the precaution of planning my activation just before leaving home. Something to put in the checklist if you suspect that you won't have good signal coverage on the park you want to activate.

I got my first contact, 1700km away to Poland and I was pretty happy with that. Ten minutes later, another contact to Lebanon ! That's around 3000km away ! That was going slowly, but quite well !

And then, nothing. For almost half an hour, I could not complete a contact. There were few stations that replied to my call, and those who did could not hear my signal report back and eventually gave up on me.

I was starting to think that I would not be able to get the 10 contacts for the activation. But then, when I changed to 20m, things changed quite a bit.

I could hear way more stations and they were answering my calls pretty quickly. In fact I had more than one moment where 3 or 4 stations were answering at the same time. And the waterfall display for the incoming signals was so crowded that it was difficutlt to find a free spot to transmit. I had to jump around constantly.

In 40min, I got 16 more contacts, so yay ! Activation completed. I know that this probably means nothing to most hams out there but, for me, was quite an accomplishment. Doing this in the middle of the woods with a radio that I assembled myself (I'm fed up of winding toroids hahahaha) and an antenna I built from electrical cable was quite rewarding (and surprising to be honest).

I also spent a bit of time after the activation trying to listen to CW on 20m to see how that would be if I operate in that mode. I still cannot head-copy, but my "goal" for next year is to be competent enought to do all this mainly on CW with maybe some SSB on the side.

Probably nobody will ever read this but, just in case, I wanted to thank all the stations that tried really hard to contact me even when my reports were not heard. I managed to complete the QSO with some of them but not with others. Maybe next time.

In the future I want to try other configurations for the EFHW. Also, I have plans to build an inverted V dipole with "plugable" ends, so I can make it resonant on all the bands that my QMX can handle (10m, 12m, 15m, 17m and 20m) yet easy to deploy.

So many things to try, so little time :-)

In the end, I enjoyed a really nice morning in the forest geeking around. This is what I wanted when I applied for the exam. So "mission acomplished".

I'm happy to share my (very limited) knowledge with anyone trying anything similar, so do not hesitate to drop me a line.

That's all for this one. Keep the bands busy ! ;-)

EA3JGQ.

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