My first National Parks on The Air activation from Blue Ridge Parkway PK01 EM85 at Craggy Gardens in North Carolina was a big success and very fun. On the July 16th 1546 UTC SO-50 pass I made fourteen contacts with the following stations, in order of contact:
01) K8YSE 02) N8HM 03) K4FEG 04) KM4ULB 05) W2JV 06) KI4RO 07) WI9I 08) WA5KBH 09) W4DTA 10) N4UFO 11) AA5PK 12) WU2M 13) K5ND 14) W1PA
Thank you to all the above stations. To those I couldn’t get back to, like NP4JV, we’ll have to do it next time. I really enjoyed the spot I found, it had a very wide open view to the west and was mostly clear in the other directions except for some small brush in the immediate vicinity. It was also out of the way from most of the park attendees, so I didn’t have to annoy anyone expecting a tranquil nature hike.
After the pass I wasn’t sure I made the ten contacts I needed to get credit to be an activator, so I made several more contacts on 146.520 simplex, talking to stations in South Carolina, Charlotte, Hickory, Hendersonville, and a few more nearby towns.
Even cooler, I connected with one of the Golden Packet [1] stations in Roan Mountain and communicated with him over the UHF coordination frequency. He helped me configure my Kenwood TH-D72a to communicate on their APRS network and we shared several packets. I wasn’t digipeated along the whole length of the Appalachian Trail, nor did I stick around for the golden packet attempt, but I did communicate directly with one of the stations using the official frequency, and that was very cool. I may have to take part more seriously next year. Thanks to Bob, WB4APR, for responding to my NPOTA activation announcement email to let me know about the event.
You can see a picture of the video of the beautiful view where I recorded the SO-50 pass on my Twitter profile [2]. I plan to make a video of the pass for my “Space Comms” YouTube channel [3], where I release new videos every Wednesday. This coming Wednesday, July 20th, won’t be a video of this NPOTA activation as I’ve already started work on an ISS SSTV video, but look for the NPOTA video in two weeks.
Thanks again for all the contacts! This was more than I’ve ever made on a single pass! The pass just flew by.
73, John Brier KG4AKV
1) http://aprs.org/at-golden-packet.html 2) https://twitter.com/johnbrier/status/754349709104480256 3) https://www.youtube.com/c/Spacecomms1