Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site POTA activation
The Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site (US-0870) was the first parks on the air park I activated. The park is located about 10 miles southwest of downtown St Louis, Missouri and is the former home of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States. At 10 acres, it’s a smaller park but it packs a lot of interesting features. The house is open for for tours and there’s a small museum attached to the visitor center, which has a nice gift shop. The visitor’s center is modern, clean and the park rangers are very friendly and knowledgeable. The park is open year round but has limited hours, basically 9-5 every day. There’s a medium sized parking lot in front, a small, tree covered area in the back, a mowed field on the south side with a small prarie adjacent to it. The park is closely surrounded by houses and is very close to Grant’s farm, which can make traffic very busy on the weekends. The notes on the pota.app mention the high tension power lines that run along the south side of the park, paralleling Grant’s trail.
I checked out the park in the morning without my equipment, chatting with the park rangers who seemed vageuly aware of parks on the air and seemed cool with me setting up equipment. I came back with my equipment later in the day and chatted with another park ranger who was also cool with me operating from the park. The notes on the pota.app site note that the power lines are not ideal for activation but I didn’t have any issues the first time I activated the park right under the lines in the grassy area next to the parking lot. I was using FT8 so that might have improved my chances, FT8 is known for being great at working through the noise. Since I was just getting back into HF almost all the equipment I was using was new to me. A low band (80, 60, 40, 30 and 20 meters) QRP Labs QMX into a Chellegance MC-750 with a Thinkpad running WS-JTX. I got 16 QSOs in about an hour on 20 meters.
I returned a month or so later, hoping to setup in the wooded area at the back of the park, away from the power lines. The park ranger said that was fine and mentioned no stakes in the ground or wires in trees. I have a tripod for my MC-750 (an optional accessory) so that was no problem. Carrying the antenna, camp chair and backpack was a bit much, but it’s a very short walk to the back of the park. This was my first activation with a new (to me) Icom IC-705, and my first time on SSB in over 20 years. Things went relatively well, I started out on SSB but things seemed to go slowly, maybe due to band conditions, maybe due to the canopy of all the trees? I switched to FT8 and 40 meters, then moved back to 20 meters on FT8. 12 QSOs in an hour and a half.
