It’s been a while since my last trip out to a park for an activation. This time of year, things get really busy and it’s hard to make time to get out to a park for a bit. So I intentionally put together a bit of a micro expedition to Cuyahoga Valley National Park [K-0020] and added a bit of a twist: I would get there via eBike.
My wife and I recently picked up some eBikes and we’ve been out putting miles on them. It only made sense to take the 50km round trip to the park and home on them. It was a beautiful day, the trails were full of people enjoying the wather, and it was a joy just to get out and do it.
I got a set of panniers with my bike and didn’t think much of them when I had them thrust upon me by the sales guy. The truth is, if a guy at Eddy’s says I should pick this one, I just go with it. They’re rarely wrong. And these bags fit all of my gear VERY nicely.
I took the IC-705, my Surface Go 2, a 3Ah battery, the mAT-705 tuner and my Chameleon whip with extension. All of it packed up nicely on the bike.
It only took about an hour to activate the park. Propagation seemed to be a little weird and there were many bands where FT8 just wasn’t a thing. 40 and 20 were busy. It was, of course, Saturday afternoon. Here’s what the log looked like:
KG4IXS FM06 40m
NA2NY FN33 40m
K3VAT FM09 40m
K1OB FM16 40m
K4HXM FM07 30m
KE4EST EM75 20m
KK4Z EM72 20m
KN1B EM40 20m
K9IHM EM86 40m
AC9HP EM69 40m
