Indiana QSO Party Portable Operation - 2021

This year I wanted to try to put in some extra effort into the Indiana QSO party. In prior years I've only done marginal effort, with only maybe a couple of hours of time dedicated to it - typically not even submitting my log. This year I wanted to activate a rare county in Indiana where there are either inactive hams, or maybe no hams residing in those counties. I decided to choose Newton county because it was relatively close and was only one county south of my home county of Lake.

I put a lot of effort into my mobile setup on my recently acquired a new vehicle, so I really wanted to use this as an opportunity to give the whole system a shake out and try everything to make sure it works for future mobile ops. A couple of weeks before the QSO party, I had a chance to make a couple of contacts, even picking up some DX, so it seemed like the system was working perfectly.

I wanted to maintain a portable designation, because I was really looking forward to making an attempt at activating one of these rare counties and potentially winning a major award for doing so. There are two possible awards that will be issued for stations that set up as portable and embark on significant effort for activating these counties.  Well, we will see, but I think its safe to say I likely didn't win anything except for a good time!

So, where to go?  I decided to make use of the LaSalle Fish and Wildlife Area, a nature preserve located just over the border in Newton County.  I reached out to the Department of Natural Resources for the State of Indiana, and I found out that I didn't need a permit and I only needed to fill out some basic paperwork.

In order to go portable, I made use of my BuddiPole antenna and strapped it to the rear of my truck. I needed to assemble guy lines and support in order to battle some of the strongest winds we have had in a while. I found out later that peak winds were reported at 51 MPH. In this setup, it would not be possible to drive, which would force my category into the portable class. I did take an opportunity to do some antenna testing between the BuddiPole dipole, and my Yaesu ATAS120. It seems like the dipole did much better, which was to be expected. I was listening to a couple of stations that came in at S5 or S7, and when I switched over to the ATAS120, they were more like S2, S3.

I spent a significant effort calling CQ, but I did go up and down the band looking for a stations for contacts. I even moved to phone and grabbed a couple of QSOs, but since I'm really not a phone operator, I didn't do very well and I'm really out of practice tuning up SSB signals.... Besides, with my marginal setup, CW was probably the best route - I only heard about 10 stations on USB.

I tried different positions in the parking lot giving me different exposures with my dipole. I wanted to see how it would perform when it was further away from the tree line, or closer up against the tree line. I needed to rotate it manually, which this seemed to help only a little bit.

After some time, I got bored and there were not many stations responding to my calls, and it seemed like I worked just about everybody I could hear up and down the band. I even got a call from another station - in Newton County - WA9LEY -how fun! He parked in another part of the same park, but we never saw each other. He did mention his excitement for activating a POTA (Parks on the air) Park - I didn't even think about that.  I looked it up and it looks like this park is K-4213.

All in all, I made 99 QSOs - had a good time and will do it again next year now that I have more experience with portable operations. I wanted to crack 100 QSOs, but when I reviewed the log, there was ONE dupe.  Oh well, next year I have a new target - DOUBLE my score this year.  Should absolutely be doable based on my new experiences and the fact that I will likely go Mobile or Rover.  

My final score was 5,539.