| Single TX in park | |||||
| Call | Parks | QSOs | Multipliers | WA9TT Bonus | Score |
| W8TAM | LKSP, CARA, GNSP, CPSP, BMSP, GDSP, THSP, NBSP, SPRA, DLSP, MLSP, RASP, LWSW | 227 | 21 | 40 | 4807 |
| KZ9V | LWSP | 222 | 11 | 20 | 2487+ |
| K9MKE | LPSF | 95 | 16 | 20 | 1565+ |
| W1QC | BHSP, RCSP | 80 | 17 | 50 | 1435+ |
| WA9TT | PRSF, GTSP, CCSP, HHSP, LDSP, HFSP | 50 | 18 | 0 | 900 |
| AC9LF | HWSF, HBSP, KNSF, PLSF, LLSF | 114 | 7 | 0 | 798 |
| WT8J | LKSP, CARA, GNSP, CPSP, BMSP, GDSP, THSP, NBSP, SPRA, DLSP, MLSP, RASP | 39 | 13 | 0 | 507 |
| N9AOT | HCSP | 52 | 5 | 20 | 305+ |
| KG9JP | FCRA | 16 | 8 | 40 | 193+ |
| W9DKB | SLSP | 14 | 4 | 0 | 56 |
| N9EEE | KNSF | 11 | 1 | 0 | 36+ |
| AA9RK | LKSP | 15 | 2 | 0 | 30 |
| KD9RMZ | HCSP | 25 | 1 | 0 | 25 |
| Multiple Tx, Multiple Ops | |||||
| W9AV | LWSW | 458 | 18 | 50 | 8319+ |
| W9FRG | LPSF | 46 | 15 | 50 | 765+ |
| W9NA | RBSP | 43 | 9 | 50 | 417 |
| WI Ops not in park | |||||
| KD9QHQ | 6 | 6 | 20 | 56 | |
| Non-WI Ops | |||||
| W8MSC | 27 | 22 | 40 | 634 | |
| NO2C | 10 | 9 | 0 | 90 | |
| K2RYD | 9 | 9 | 0 | 81 | |
| PA3OES | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| W9GPB | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
+25 bonus points for pictures and comments submitted with log entry.
Here are a few of the pictures we received from park participants.
Congrats to Clint W9AV & Quent W6RL for overall high score.
Andy K9MKE enjoyed the WI great outdoors at Lapham Peak in the Kettle Moraine state forest.
Here is a great shot of Dave KZ9V at Lake Wissota state park.
Soapbox
I never heard the bonus station or saw him spotted. But we had a lot of fun chasing. Lou NO2C
Stuck in traffic on the freeway for half an hour. Got my EFHW stuck in a tree and couldn’t get it down for half an hour. Had trouble tuning up on 20 meters until I messed with radials.
Bugs were bad. Internet (and thus spotting) was patchy. 40 meters was too long to work other WI stations. Failure after failure. It was not my best POTA experience ever.
I didn’t understand from the rules that I needed a park photo AND a Packers photo to get the bonus points. I thought it was one or other. Oh well, yet another failure for this year.
My guess is that the winning strategy in this contest is either to have a monster 75 meter setup or activate like 15 parks in the six hours, neither of which I can do. Otherwise your multiplier count is just too low.
Michael AA9RK
W9AV and W6RI set up in a tent on the bank of the Wisconsin River near Muscoda as in the past three years. We had three radios dedicated to 80, 40, and 20, with networked computers using the N1MM+ logger.
In addition to the usual antennas, we added a 20 meter OCF dipole and an 80 meter half-wave end-fed NVIS. The addition of CW was helpful, and 23% of our QSOs were on CW.
The bands were short this year due to low solar activity. Most of our QSOs (75%) were on 40 meters with some good runs especially in the last hour.
We outscored last year in both QSOs and multipliers, thanks to the heroic efforts of the rovers. Thanks to the organizers and other participants for a successful and growing event.
Clint W9AV and Quent W6RI
I worked 2 other Wisconsin Parks, W9DKB in SLSP while I was at HWSF early on and K9MKE in LPSF while I was at LLSF towards the end of the day. Thanks you two! I also activated 5 Wisconsin parks myself.
I ended up starting late as my spouse wanted to come with and had another hobby of hers to attend in the morning. The first park I activated for WIPOTA 2021 was Havenwoods State Forest.
We made our way towards Harrington Beach hitting a slow down in traffic on the way. I managed to activate this park in about 20 minutes. The setup and take down of the antenna and equipment adds a bit of time to that.
We moved on to the Northern Kettle Moraine unit and when there I was able to activate it in short order. Then we went to Pike Lake which was fairly busy and had large swarms of flying insects which did not appear to be of the biting type.
After a quick park activation here we moved over to Loew Lake unit. I only had about an hour once at Loew Lake unit to increase my contact count so I settled in and got to work.
The total drive time was 3.5 hours and we traveled 127 miles round trip in order to activate these 5 parks myself. This took a large chunk of time out of the schedule especially since I had to start about an hour late but I think it was worth it to get the multipliers.
It also gave my 12Ah SLA battery a chance to rest while we made our way to the next stop. I did have a backup plan if the SLA battery were to go dead but I did not have to implement it.
I was aiming to hit at least 10 contacts at each park and focus on making as many contacts as possible at the last stop on my list. I think I did fairly well in this respect.
This year I opted to try for simplicity while aiming to gather as many self activated parks as possible. I stuck to a single, well used band, 40 meters around 7.220MHz.
The original plan was to use a mobile ham stick at the first 4 parks and finish up with a full sized antenna using my 31 foot telescoping pole.
However, the full sized antenna takes much more time to setup then the ham stick does. The last park, Loew Lake was entered with only a short time left in the event.
Nick AC9LF
Saturday was a beautiful day to play radio! As an experienced POTA operator, but first time WIPOTA operator, I decided to go up to Lapham Peak where I was working on my Kilo for POTA.
I drove up to the top and saw several operators, so I went and said hi and checked out their setups. I realized I forgot to wear my packers gear as the weather just screamed Hawaiian shirt,
but I found a Packers flag at their station and took a picture, hoping it might count for the bonus in addition to a picture of my station.
At the parking lot down the road I set up my station consisting of a Chameleon Emcomm III Portable in NVIS configuration for 80m, and a WRC and/or Chameleon 17′ Whip on my K400 mount on my 4Runner for 40 and 20.
I was set up about an hour late, but otherwise worked the course of the contest. I was very impressed with 80m, never having setup an NVIS antenna before.
Enjoyed chasing W8TAM and WA9TT around as well. 94 QSOs in total including 21 in WI, and 23 total on 80m as far as NY!
Andy K9MKE
I love the POTA program and I always look forward to the WIPOTA event. The trophy from last year’s event was beautiful so I went back to the same Lake Wissota State Park (near Eau Claire / Chippewa Falls) hoping to top last year’s effort.
The weather and propagation conditions were superb. Running 100 watts to my linked dipole inverted “V” was like shooting fish in a barrel on 40 meters. Unbelievably fun!
I always hope for more Wisconsin park multipliers but 11 this year doubled my total from last year, so I’m happy with that. I probably should have spent more time on 80 meters looking for them,
but the pileups were so steady on 40 that it was hard to break away. I love everything about this event so don’t change a thing. My only suggestion would be perhaps finding a way to coordinate the 80 meter park-to-park effort. Perhaps every hour at the top of the hour or some such thing.
Dave KZ9V
While operating during WIPOTA at Fischer Creek Recreational Area on Lake Michigan and POTA park K-4258, a cyclist riding by stopped by to ask about my operation.
It turns out that not only was he a graduate from my alma mater, Marquette University (8 years prior), he had a long interest in SWLing and amateur radio.
As we exchanged stories (he built a Heath kit receiver with his father), his interest peaked as this could be another hobby for him in his retirement. He currently resides in the Milwaukee area but stated he plans to move to Appleton in the future.
I passed my info on to him. Who knows? FCARC may pick up new member courtesy of Wisconsin Parks on the Air!
KC KG9JP
We had a great time attempting to make contacts. Setup in a new area, and put our antennas way to close together so we had a lot of interference. W9FRG consisted of Will K9OO, Tom KC9ONY, Dave WC9H and Steve W9MCU.
Lots of chatting was had. We had two other ham operators come up to the Lapham peak tower. One we caught on 2m calling CQ and he drove up and talked most of the afternoon with us. Another came up and was going to do the WIPOTA and POTA.
He said he hit his 1000+ POTA contact that afternoon! Weather was perfect and we killed only one mosquito all day. 80m was a good idea for contacts locally. Next time we’ll have a better setup for that.
Will W9FRG
We set an ambitious goal, with as many parks in the short period of contest time as possible. We kept to our schedule, and a little ahead for the first half of the contest, but fell behind during the middle part.
We made up our time and made it to all the planned parks. My goal was to make 10 contacts per park to also qualify as a Parks on the Air activation. I managed that at all but one park. Thanks to everyone who made contact with me during the contest! What fun!
Thom W8TAM
Operating QRP, portable, is a significant effort compared to 150w stations or mobiles, and should be rewarded with their own award class. It requires one person physically transporting equipment to the site;
antenna set-up (often multiple antennas); portable power; low transmit power which challenges being heard in pile-ups or getting responses to a CQ call.
Dick N9EEE
Weather was great and I had a nice time. I used the 80m “Raptor” antenna again for all bands (with LDG RT100 tuner). XCVR is IC-7300. Logging SW is N1MM.
Wayne W1QC
An absolute whirlwind of a day, thank you very much for the fun event!
Julie WT8J