Preparation:

The first of the two parks in the title is a brand-new park, taken over from WWFF into POTA, I believe. The second is one that I activated as the first activator on September 9th. The new park is very large, and I managed to find a spot where the two parks border with each other, making this a 2-fer. Given the current weather, the fact that that point was in the middle of a parking area made this another PLOTA (operation from the car) activation opportunity.

So the same equipment as used for the last few activations was packed into the car, and the just over 30-minute drive to the planned spot started.

The Activation

POTA DE-1061 / DE-1067

The drive started in heavy rain; however, upon arrival in the (empty) parking area, the rain stopped, only to restart as I set off home, having completed the activation. The entry to the parking area is not well sign-posted; indeed, one entrance to it has been completely closed. Being close to the banks of Lake Ammer, I’m sure this parking spot will be full in the summer months, but on a cold, rainy autumn day, I had it all to myself.

After mounting the HF-PRO2 on the magnetic mount on the roof and connecting up to the battery, the station was ready to go, so I tuned around the band first of all, to get a contact in the log book and test the equipment before searching for a free frequency to start calling CQ POTA on. That first strong station that I found was SM/LB9JE in another POTA park, so I was able to start the log with a P2P contact and happy that the equipment was working well, I went and found a free frequency, spotted myself on the POTA cluster, and 14 contacts came in quick succession. The 15th contact with I0XVZ/QRP, however, did not go to plan. Halfway through the contact, the power output dropped from the usual 20 watts to under 1 watt. The same problem that I experienced in the last activation. Unfortunately, swapping the microphone cable around end-to-end did not fix the issue. I could have simply packed up at this point, as I had more than the required 10 contacts, but I wanted to at least finish the contact with the Italian station. Amazingly, with 800 mW, he was still hearing me, and we finished the QSO almost as if nothing had happened! I was then called by SP8DPY, and that QSO was also completed with under 1 watt of RF from me.

One thing I hadn’t tried the previous time this problem happened was to change to a carrier-based mode and check what the output was. I switched to FM and … still just one watt output, so that proves the issue is not in the audio chain. Switching between and trying different modes, however, fixed the issue (unfortunately, I don’t have a logical reason as to why). At least I was fully operational again.

I was tempted at this point to call it a day, but looking at the POTA Cluster, I could see other activators had just come up, and I finished the activation with three more Park-to-Park contacts (at 20 watts).

Photos:

Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G-90 radio.
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna.
• 3-magnet car roof mount and single magnet mount (single not used).
• 8 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• 2 x 4Ah Eremit LifePO4 batteries (not used).
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.

Log:

POTA DE-1061/ DE-1067

Conclusions:

The problem from the last activation has returned. This time, it did not take long to fix it; however, I am not happy with this fix, as it looks like this may happen again at any time. In future, I may have to take a spare radio along if I can’t find a solution for this.

73 ’til the next activation!