Chino Hills State Park POTA 8/25/24

Chino Hills State Park is "lunch-break close" to my workplace, and my plan over the next year or so is to head the park at least once a week to activate, improve my CW skills, and eventually overtake the "Park Leader" position. That's right, I'm looking at you K6KWI! I will admit that I've got a long way to go with my current 3 activations vs. his 61. Still, it's good to have goals.

To accomplish this, my aim is to put together a setup that will deploy quickly and require a minimum amount of equipment. While I do really enjoy using the Lab 599 TX-500 QRP transceiver, it does require a bit of fiddling as everything must be connected via adapters and leads that are separate from the radio itself. Additionally, while the Chelegance MC-750 vertical is quick and easy to setup, it does take a few minutes to deploy and adds to the total setup time for the kit.

I suspect that the perfect QRP POTA kit down the road would be an Elecraft KX-2 transceiver coupled with the AX-1 (or AX-2) vertical antenna. As the KX-2 has an internal battery and speaker (both of which the TX-500 lacks), the use of the KX-2 and the AX-1 cuts out a battery and cable, speaker microphone, and even the coax as the AX-1 antenna connects directly to the KX-2 chassis. This takes the setup time from 3-5 minutes down to 1 minute and dramatically reduces the hassle and footprint of the operation. Perhaps a KX-2 will be in the cards someday...

For today's activation I settled in at the usual covered picnic area and set up with the TX-500, the Chelegance MC-750 vertical antenna, and the BaMaKey TP-III. I started with hunting 5 stations on 20m, then switched to 15M and called CQ for another 7 contacts for a total of 12 CW contacts in the activation.

I took a brief pause during the activation to watch a lone coyote on the opposite side of the canyon hunt for their lunch as they made their way up the hill.

Current Chino Hills State Park Score: 3 to 61