August 12, 2023 - North end of Mable Lake, British Columbia
Mike VE7KPZ and YL Jane VE7WWJ decided that some not-yet-activated parks needed to be activated this weekend. One of which was Wap Creek Provincial Park VE-4270 at the north end of Mabel Lake.
The plan was made to set up basecamp at Noisy Creek forestry recreation site and on Saturday morning, make a day trip via kayak to the beach where Wap Creek meets Mabel Lake.
The approximately 4 km paddle to the activation site took around an hour with the wind at our backs.
We first setup Mike's HyEndFed 3-band Portable Mini antenna as a sloper running East/West, the feed point on the end of Mike's SOTAbeams Tactical Mini 6-meter pole and the other end strung high up over a tree branch.
Jane moved on to prepare some lunch while Mike rigged up his Icom IC-705, DIY599 PA500 amplifier, KN6STX amp cooling solution and DIY599 BAT500 battery for 40 watts PEP SSB on 20m. The whole radio apparatus was velcroed to one of the grab handles of Mike's kayak to keep it steady and not fall onto the sandy beach. The operating position was nicely in the shade of a large tree.
While consuming sandwiches, Mike started to call for POTA... but it was slow going. Nobody was coming back to calls. So, a switch to search and pounce was in order and several P2P QSOs were made. Setting up for calling again 3k up from another POTA station finally got some results as a hunter was nice enough to spot (this was a no-cell service area).
With a mountain just to the east of the antenna, it was amazing to get QSOs from Wisconsin, New York, Quebec and Ontario in the log. A memorable QSO was made with both VE2FTX and VE2JCA, a pair of POTA operators passing the mic back and forth in Quebec. 18 QSOs in about an hour wasn't too bad and the park was activated for the first time.
The paddle back to camp was up-wind and took almost 2 hours to return, but we were happy to have the park in the bag.
This one required a bit of an effort to get to but was definitely worth it,
73,
Mike VE7KPZ
Ps: here are some pics from the event:
Our destination is at the end of the lake.
Destination beach and shady tree in sight.
Operating position.
View from operating position.
Radio velcroed to the kayak to keep it out of the beach sand.
On the way back to camp.
We saw an osprey with nest.
We also saw a turtle sunning.