The week of September 21st my siblings with our spouses did a 5 day bike ride from Cleveland to Cincinnati on the Ohio to Erie Trail. Five of the six of us are hams. I knew that I was going to spend the mornings driving the sag wagon/chase vehicle (W8SMH’s pickup truck) and the afternoons riding my bike. So, I brought along my smallest HF station to try to operate and activate a park or two for POTA. You can see my complete station in the picture.
The power was from the blue Bioenno 4.5 amp hour battery on the bottom left. The black rig in the center is my QRP Labs, QMX radio that covers 80 to 20 meters, 5 watts, CW-SSB-Digital. I built it from a kit. The module on the bottom right is a buck converter that lowers the 13.8 battery voltage to exactly 12 volts to keep the radio happy. I am holding my small Modern Morse CW key in my left hand and writing calls in a paper log with my right hand. When sending CW, I held the key with the left hand and used the paddles with my right hand. I had to drop the pencil to use the key, otherwise sending was bad. My antenna was a collapsable/extendable 17’ whip that I screwed onto my brother’s 2 meter antenna mount on the truck when operating. I could only use it while stationary. That turned out to be a perfect 20 meter vertical antenna setup. I also had a coil that I inserted to get on 40 meters. For backup I had brought a ground stake mount with radial wires for the 17’ whip, and a 20 meter endfed wire antenna, just in case I needed them. It was hard to fit in time to operate. We had to scout out trail stops to meet the group every 10-15 miles, switch out eBike batteries every 30 miles, bring the snacks, rain gear, and scope out lunch spots. The first day out of Cleveland the OTET trail passes through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which runs along the old Erie Canal tow path. I parked and setup at one of the trail heads so that I could ‘activate’ the park for Parks on the Air. I was able to make 11 CW contacts on 20 meters. A minimum of 10 contacts are needed to qualify for a POTA ‘activation’. It was fun, but we got behind and had to go catch up with the bikes. On Wednesday, I had enough time to squeeze in another operation at Mount Vernon trail head where the bikers started that day. I made 10 CW contacts in about 15 minutes on 20m and 40m during the 9 am morning session of CW Ops. Stations had no trouble hearing me with the 5 watts of power. It was a fun experience. It was a minimalist operation, no computer, using a QRP radio and completely off grid.
