POTA Activation Pine Creek Wildlife Management Area US-6369

This upcoming weekend (28 March 2024 - 01 April 2024) I will be spending the weekend at my brothers place at the Pine Creek Wildlife Management Area US-6369. This park in located in south-east Oklahoma in McCurtain and Pushmataha Counties. It has been activated a total of 4 times but only three of those reached the minimum of 10 QSO's. A total of 106 QSO's have been made from all of the activations. Two activators are tied at having 46 QSO's each. It's last activation was in October 2023, about 6 months ago. 

My setup will be using a sBITX transceiver with a homebrew 40-10 meter EFHW. I will be mostly on FT8 and some SSB work. One of my goals is to contact by radio my friends that live in the Oklahoma City Area. I also wish to surpass the 46 QSO limit that seems to exist for this park. Because I will be completely rebuilding my shack it may be a little while before I upload my log to LOTW, eQSL, and POTA. I will upload to QRZ.com. Follow me on Twitter or X what ever it is called this week, my handle is Aaron@K5ATG and I will post there when I get on the air. 

For this activation I will respond to all QSL cards, I will also try to make some QSL cards specific to this activation. They will not be of the highest quality because I will make and print them from home. My information is correct on QRZ.com. If you do see me on the air, I just please ask that you spot me. I would really like to get 50 QSO's for the weekend. 

For more information please visit the following links:

POTA (Parks On The Air)

Pine Creek Wildlife Management Area

Of course be kind to each other on the air and in life. For future updates please subscribe to this blog. Feel free to contact me at Aaron@K5ATG.com

'72

Aaron K5ATG

 

New Shack Desk II

 Got an update on my new shack desk. 

Special thanks to my son Dakota, the finish and the poly has been applied. Now we just need to air it out for a few days to get rid of the fumes and then put it in the house. I'm getting excited for it. It will make life in the shack so much easier. 

Bob Heil K9EID SK

 The amateur radio community is sad by the loss of amateur radio legend Bob Heil K9EID. He is the founder of Heil Sound, who makes audio equipment that is used by the best musical artist around the world and also the first manufacture to be admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was also on of the original hosts of Ham Nation.  I could go on and write down all of his accomplishments but I would be typing here for a week. 

I was very lucky to have met him in 2019 OzarkCon in Branson Missouri

We exchanged probably over 100 emails over the years with him giving me advice on radios and antennas and me entertaining him with jokes. I'm sure that he is in Heaven building coaxial resonant dipoles and hooking up a audio mixer and stage monitors to a HF radio. 

Bob thank you for teaching us so much. 

Aaron K5ATG

P.S. SK stands for Silent Key which in amateur radio lingo means that a amateur radio operator passed away.