My first POTA activation

This was on June 12th, 2022 at Wildcat Mountain State Park, K-1480, in Vernon County, WI; EN43rq.     

 I had been having only limited success with the end-fed random wire antennas in the 26' - 28' range I had been using on my last few hikes, so for a POTA activation attempt I brought out the Buddipole Deluxe set that I bought at Dayton years ago,  along with everything else I could think of; lots of room in a minivan !

Setup was lengthy because I hadn't actually deployed the Buddipole in a long time; on the spot I decided on making a 20 meter vertical from the Buddipole In The Field book: the 12 foot whip on top of 2 arms with 4 radials, all fed from the tee.   With the extendable pole and the tripod I could get it high enough without needing trees or other structures.

Using 3 different colors of mason's line for guying helps keep confusion to a minimum!     (there will still be enough for everyone!)       The guy ring is homemade from an extra-large 3/8" stainless fender washer.

The 17' radials were cut on site, I just tossed a spool of wire onto the pile while I was loading up the night before :

I used one of the adjustable-angle adapters from the kit to attach the 4 radials to the tee:

With everything assembled, I found it easiest to extend the whip, then screw the  collapsed extension pole into the tee and then insert the pole in the tripod.       Now it was easy to extend the pole, section by section, until the antenna was waving around waaay up there!      Quickly, the guys!       I think that the four big concrete blocks were a bit much, but they were handy when I was packing up, and there is no denying that they did an excellent job.

3 of the 4 radials were taped to the guys, the 4th just dangled and waved in the breeze.

After an hour-and-a-half of antenna assembly and improvisation, setting up a folding table and chair was a pleasant relief!     

Most of the 18 QSOs I logged were park-to-park ones, the few others were hunters who showed up after someone posted a spot of me ... I need to work on this some more; if I had brought the necessary equipment I could have had internet access up there.

After the X6100's internal battery ran down, I hooked it up to the 12 volt power from the car using some of the modular Powerpole stuff I used for emcomm and past Field Days.     Didn't run the power up to 10 watts until much later, though.

 Sometime in the afternoon the sun broke through the clouds and it started to warm up, by the time I was done taking everything down my arms were getting a faint pink sunburn.     Lots of fun was had anyway, and I want to do it again soon !