This weekend, my son’s Trail Life troop was camping at Chattahoochee Bend State Park. Since the focus was going to be bike riding, and I don’t have a bike, I decided to bring my kayaks, and my ham radio. I was going to do some fishing while they were riding, and work my radio later to see if there were any evening nets. Chattahoochee Bend State Park is 65 miles, line of sight, from my house, and far from what I can reach with my antenna, so I wanted to try and make some contacts in a new area.
During our travel there, I decided to try calling on the 2M call frequency. I’ve never made a simplex contact, and was surprised to get a response somewhere around Newnan from a 13 year old ham, KQ4UWH. He told us that he got his license when he was 12. We talked for a few minutes before the signal started to fade, but this seemed to perk my own 12 year old son’s ears up to actually hear someone his own age on the radio. So far, all he’s been able to hear is me talking to a bunch of old guys, but he does enjoy Wednesday trivia on the Barnesville repeater.
Saturday morning, the boys left for their bike ride, so I headed down to the river. As I was pulling around towards the boat ramp, I noticed a couple of guys throwing a large weight and rope into the trees in the woods surrounding the parking lot. As soon as I saw this, I knew they must be setting up an antenna, so I pulled over and introduced myself.
Walter (KN4NQX), and another fellow was setting up his radio to try and activate Chattahoochee Bend (US-2168) for the POTA “Support Your Parks” fall weekend. I’m VERY sorry in advance for not knowing anyone else’s info… I’m horrible with names, and even worse with call signs. Walter was very friendly and inviting, and didn’t seem the least bit bothered by my intrusion. I believe I hung out for almost 3 hours, meeting 5 or 6 other local hams who came and went while we were there, but none set up their own radios. We even met a couple of folks who were just curious about what he was doing, and I found out that a few of the dad’s in my son’s Trail Life troop are also interested in ham.
Walter gave me a pretty thorough rundown of his setup, including his logging software from N3FJP (which I will be checking out, so I can be prepared once I start working HF). He also was very encouraging of the idea of setting up my own club (my county is currently without one) so that we could qualify for a grant to get a repeater setup (my county is also without a repeater). He explained to me how he had helped coordinate this type of thing in a county local to him. Maybe in the future, I’ll have the time to do this, but I was encouraged to hear how relatively easy it is…. at least that’s how he made it sound.
While I was there, he was able to make a few contacts. I’m not sure if he ever got enough to fully activate the park, and I feel partially responsible for him not working his radio as much as he probably would have liked, but the farthest one I heard was from Germany, and I believe it was on 15 meter. It will never cease to amaze me how a radio, and a length of wire can reach the other side of the world.
Walter asked me if I knew of the “Turnip Truck Net”, which I did not. This is a net that has apparently been happening every Saturday night at 10 for decades on the Stone Mountain W4BOC repeater. I keep W4BOC in my scan list when I’m at home, and I’ve used it many times, but I’ve usually turned my radio off by 10, especially on Saturdays, which explains why I had not heard about it. He said that he had gotten permission from W4BOC and K4NRC (Newnan) repeater owners to link that night, and that he would be the net control for that nights Turnip Truck net. Being the good ambassador for ham radio that he is, he encouraged me to get some boys from the troop to participate, and he would make sure to talk to them.
Well, the weather forecast for Sunday morning turned ugly, so we decided to head out Saturday night to avoid having to pack in the rain. We got loaded up and hit the road about 10, just in time to hear the net get started up. The preamble to the Turnip Truck net is pretty amusing, but besides that, it seemed fairly normal, but with a higher than average number of drop outs. There may have been some technical glitches with the link that caused some folks to quit, as there were a few complaints about over modulation, or maybe it’s because its late, and most hams are old, and they just fell asleep at their consoles? No matter, when I checked in, Walter asked me if I had any company.
I let him know that I had 1, my son, so he assigned a /2 call sign, and got him on the air. My son has been bugging me to talk on the radio for some time. I’ve let him answer a couple of questions on trivia night, but besides that, the opportunity really hasn’t come up to chat with someone. I told him that he would be called on to talk tonight, and that he should be prepared. The question for the night was “What is something that you really enjoy about camping” in honor of the “Support your local parks weekend” POTA contest. My son is a talker, and suddenly he was nervous for some reason. He had a moment of mic fright, but was able to get over it and chat. I really appreciated this opportunity, and hope that it gets him interested in ham. Currently, he’s intrigued by it, but doesn’t seem interested enough to start studying. I won’t force it on him, he either wants to, or he doesn’t.
So, what was supposed to be a simple campout turned into a really productive ham weekend! Thanks to all the guys who I talked to over the weekend.
73 y’all!