W/VE Islands QSO Party and Parks On The Air at Okaloosa Island, Florida

Dennis WA6QKN and I had lots of ham radio fun on Saturday at the Gulf Islands National Seashore Okaloosa Island Day Use Area near Destin, Florida. The US Islands organization sponsored the W/VE QSO Party that day. Okaloosa Island is US Islands FL003S. Also, this site is part of the National Park System and counts for Parks On The Air as KFF-0661. I was concerned initially when I saw a lot of vehicles at my favorite picnic area. It turns out that Marine recruits were having a drill and picnic before they leave for boot camp. No worries as we had plenty of space for our setup. 

The Marines were our neighbors

I choose my vertical oriented 100-foot loop for the antenna. It is the one I built for Field Day. It went up smoothly with the three fiberglass poles. We used a sledgehammer to drive the angle iron stakes for the poles. That hammer would be heavy for RaDAR. The rig was my Icom 7100 running 100 watts using a 40 AH Bioenno LiFePO4 battery. An AH-4 tuner matches the loop impedance to 50 ohms for the rig. I am pleased with the ease of erecting the loop and antenna. It did a great job on 40 and 20 meters and even the high bands 17, 15 and 10 meters. 

The 100 foot horizontally polarized loop antenna used three 31 foot poles for support.

As the day went on the bands started sounding decent. We operated only SSB. We worked a number of Kansas and Ohio QSO party stations. They dominated the bands. The other W/VE Island stations were hard to find. I did get called by Scott ND9E operating from an island in Missouri..Later, I answered a CQ from VA3TIC on an island in Ontario. Dennis saved me the chore of logging all day. That was a great help.

Greg N4KGL. Photo by Dennis WA6QKN.

In regard to Parks On The Air, I worked KFF-1077 in Arkansas. That counts for POTA Park to Park. I spotted myself for POTA and a couple of Croatian stations came right back. For grins, we checked the high bands. To my surprise, there was an opening to Brazil on 10 meters! I also worked Suriname on 17 meters. The highlight of the day was snagging KH6TU in Maui Hawaii operating the Hawaii QSO party on 15 meters.

Dennis and I worked in a  repeat of the Saltwater Effect experiment with two WSPRlite Beacons and N6BT Bravo 7K verticals. Dennis did a lot of the setup and tear down of the verticals. We left one Bravo 7K vertical unattended on the beach at the bay. It was right over the salt water. Fortunately, it did not attract any undue attention. The second vertical was across the park road on a grassy spot. 

Dennis models the saltwater shore Bravo 7K vertical with a WSPRlite beacon.

Of the 66 stations receiving both beacons, all but one had a better average SNR on the salt water shore vertical over the inland vertical. There were 52 stations that copied the salt water shore vertical and did not copy the inland vertical at all. The salt water shore vertical got across the Atlantic and down to Brazil where the inland vertical did not. I am getting more and more confident that the salt water effect is real and measurable. The beacon that was a loser in past tests won today. Prior to this test, I measured the output of the beacons into a dummy load and they are both the same.

The inland Bravo 7K vertical with a WSPRlite beacon.

Despite the sticky weather, Dennis and I had a great day and Suzy did as well. It was well worth the trip from Panama City. I introduced Dennis to the QSO Today Podcasts on the trip home. We listened to Eric Guth 4Z1UG interview Art Bell W6OOB.

.Suzy hams it up with Dennis