Four nature parks in two weeks

Activating three new PAFFs

The list of new PAFF references provides a nice incentive to go out and activate. With my youngest daughter going to school since recently I have some extra spare time.

In the past two weeks I visited four nature parks, logging 560 contacts in total:

• Loenermark, PAFF-053 - 145 stations, 31 DXCCs, max QRB 8200km (YY) 
• Buurserzand & Haaksbergseveen, PAFF-056 - 99 stations, 20 DXCCs, max QRB 3600km (UA9)
• Planken Wambuis, PAFF-067 - 107 stations, 25 DXCCs, max QRB 7300km (K0)
• Boswachterij Sleenerzand, PAFF-061 - 209 stations, 32 DXCCs, max QRB 9500km (PY1)

I have posted a bit of info on these activities on the PAFF website.

The most pleasant activation by far was the activation of PAFF-061. One of the operation positions I selected using Google Maps turned out to be very beautiful and serene. Just the place to spoil with some EMF ;-)

Operating in the sun - not much wrong with that

Spiderbeam 12m pole attached to the bench

The autumn leafs brought a lot of colour and the sun was out making it a warm 10 degrees Celsius. When I saw that the place was far from crowded I decided to operate from one of the benches overlooking a nice field. The bench was still a bit wet but nothing an old garbage bag could not solve. I stayed outside for almost 2 hours operating on 17m and 20m. Then rain came in (I was warned 15 minutes earlier thanks to a handy Android app) and I went back to the car. From the car I operated on 40m and 20m.

View from the operating position

The field itself was surrounded by wire of an unfriendly kind

I was slightly worried that the electric fence around the field would generate QRM but I did not notice it, apart from S7 QRM on 40m. But that is hardly extraordinary around lunch time.