Today was Rockville Science Center’s monthly Coffee and POTA outing. We activated McKee-Breshers wildlife management area.

It was a hot one today. I am very glad I brought out a 10x10 canopy. The 6-foot table and canopy worked out quite well for the group. I don’t think we would have survived the heat without the shade.

My hope was that we’d be able to activate next to the sunflower fields. However this year, they didn’t plant sunflowers at the Syncamore Landing location. My mistake.

We had quite a few regulars from the Amateur radio hangout, Howard KC3LUE from the Rockville Science Center and Harvey KC3VVL. We also had three new attendees. It was nice to see David W2LNX come out to the activation this month.

We were next to the C&O Canal trail, so we had a quite a few cyclists stop and ask what we were doing. There were also a number of folks looking for the sunflowers who stopped by to see what we were doing. Today was a bit of a mini-field day with all the public outreach we were doing.

Howard set up his 20m dipole and we used his ICOM 7300. The band conditions were terrific. I made 7 contacts in 10 minutes. We were chatting quite a bit, so the activation played second fiddle to socializing. That’s OK. It is nice to hang out in the park and geek out about radios with people. When most clubs seem to still be online only, it is so great to get some time to hang out with fellow hams.

Around 1pm, everyone was winding down and getting ready to leave. I thought I’d stick around a little longer and try to finish up the activation with the QMX.

I threw my 20m K6ARK EFHW into a tree. The length of this end fed is only around 35-feet. I grossly underestimated how much shorter a 20m half-wave is compared to the 40m ones I’m used it. It was so short, that half of the sloper was my 25’ RG-316 coax.

Once I got the QMX on the air, I went hunting. Wouldn’t you know it? The first activator I heard faintly was, KB9VBR. How fitting. The person who inspired me to get into POTA was my first QRP contact with the QMX.

Michael could barely hear me. He gave me a signal report of 33. I immediately thought, “Oh no. SSB on the QMX might not work well”. I’m curious what kind of set-up he was experimenting with this time.

Fortunately, the QMX’s SSB support wasn’t to blame for the 33. I hunted 3 more parks and received two 55s and a 57. SSB on the QMX seems to work well. After those SSB contacts, I thought I’d give FT8CN a whirl. I got 3 more contacts that way.

It was a really great activation. There were new faces. The canopy and table worked well. We didn’t get very many contacts, but that was because we were having too much fun. Thanks to Howard KC3LUE we have pictures from the activation.

Here are some more photos Howard took after the activation: