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Ben and I grabbed dinner and headed to the Columbia Riverfront Park to activate US-4567, Capt John Smith Trail.

Since there were more people around, I setup the simple GRA-1900T next to our picnic table instead of throwing wires. 20m was very busy, so I was getting a bit lost in all the traffic. I moved to 40m and re-tuned to rack up my more local contacts. As the sun set, our reach got better on 40m. Of course, I accidentally crossed 0000UTC again into the next day, so it was 2 activations: one (incomplete) with 5 QSOs, and the other with 14 QSOs. I operated all digital, since it got dark, and we were looking to pack up soon.

I headed back to US-1418, Sam Lewis to tried a quick activation on my way to my parents’ house, but I got sidetracked. KN3A, Scott, was already there, so I chatted with him for a few minutes, and then setup my station on the other side of the park. I used my GRA-1900T for a quick setup on 20m. I saw Scott hunting up the band with his big, very local, signal, and then set out to do some FT8. The band was busy, but then just shut off nearing 1900UTC.

I heard about a storm coming from the local repeaters. I tried a bit on 15m, but decided to pack up as I heard more thunder. I only got a few contacts, since I didn’t give myself near enough time.

At US-1418, Sam Lewis, I tried setting up down near the low playground on the corner near the road. There were no trees with good spots. All the viable branches were very high, and I couldn’t quite get a line over them.

I resorted to an inverted-v supported by fishing pole in the middle at 9ft or so. I operated mostly FT8 on 15m, 20m, and 40m, and I did a little SSB on 40m. I got Canada, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, etc.

We headed to Caledonia State Park for the Arts & Craft Fair for a couple hours. I threw the 12.5m EFRW into a nearby tree. 40m was dead. 20m and 15m were very busy with SSB contesters for the IARU HF World Championship. Via FT8 and SSB, I could hear lots of EU on 15m, 17m, and 20m, but not much in local signals. Not many people were hearing me, so I only made 4 contacts in the hour or so that I tried.

There’s a special event contacting stations the 13 Colonies for the week over Independence Day in the US.

I contacted the following stations by SSB and FT8 over my couple days at home and out in the parks:

• K2A
• K2B
• K2C
• K2D
• K2E
• K2F
• K2G
• K2H
• K2I
• K2J
• K2K
• K2L
• K2M
• KU2US
• GB13COL
• WM3PEN
• TM13COL

I was traveling to DC the weekend of ARRL Field Day, so I found some time e-bike from the hotel to activate US-0655, the National Mall from a park bench at the mall. I clamped the GRA-1900T right to the bench. Field Day was happening, so traditional bands were very busy. I jumped to 17m for a quieter, POTA-only experience. The LiFePO4 battery hadn’t been charged in a while, so it went dead by the end of my activation. It was a bit of a race against the dwindling battery. With the battery completely exhausted, and running on the internal battery of the x6100, I got to 12 contacts.

I had played with the radio the night before. I tried my gra-1900T and the 12.5m EFRW in the hotel room. We were on the 9th floor of 10 floors in Downtown DC. I barely got out for a moment on 40m with the wire, then nothing. The whip did absolutely nothing.

I had heard a bit of pulsing noise on all the FT8 bands the other night.

On the Morning Grind Net, Rick, WB3CSY, mentioned this as well and that he suspects it came from a solar flare that was hitting us.

I cleaned up the backyard a bit, and ran a new 12.5m (41ft) random wire up the hill behind the house.

My first tests the next day on 30m at 1W got me some contacts. By 4:40pm EDT, the bands were all in “poor” condition, so it got tough to test.

The next morning, I watched the 40m band close. It was ablaze at 8am, but getting pretty quiet by 10:30am EDT.

I compared the old antenna out the front with the new antenna out the back using FT8 and PSKReporter.

The back antenna saw fewer decodes on 15m on average. It mostly lacked any stations from Europe. Looking at the antenna’s physical attributes, it starts on first floor (lower than the old antenna) in backyard, but it slopes up more vertically. The middle of the antenna, on average, is blocked by the hill to the East.

The old antenna out the front saw more decodes overall, including Europe. It starts at second floor window and only slightly angles up. The whole antenna is higher and clears the hill, even though Europe may still be mostly all the end of the antenna. It performs better.

I had fun physically launching the new antenna, but I’ll need to do some more work to get more of it higher in the air to be useful.

I spun the dial below the 30m ham band at the end of the night, and I caught all kinds of interesting broadcast (31m) and HF air traffic.

The 40m band was hot at 5:30am EDT. I got:

• Trinidad and Tobago
• Dominican Republic
• mostly eastern US otherwise

Switched up to 15m to get Finland, and I grabbed 1 local contact on 6m. I’ve accumulated 1800 contacts on QRZ, 1489 are confirmed, across 79 countries.