Joint POTA Activation With W8LT and W8YX

On Saturday, April 13, 2024 the amateur radio clubs from The Ohio State University (W8LT) and The University of Cincinnati (W8YX) held a joint Parks on the Air (POTA) activation at Cowan Lake State Park in Ohio.

If you are new to my blog, I volunteer with the Amateur Radio & RF Club at The Ohio State University (W8LT), to get students involved and on the air.

One of the ideas that has been floating around at W8LT and W8YX, was doing a joint POTA about half way between Columbus and Cincinnati. Even though it is a little closer to Cincinnati, Cowan Lake State Park ended up being our best bet for a “half way” POTA park. We rented the “dance pavilion” for the day, which was pretty affordable. At opposite ends of the line of picnic tables is where we setup, to attempt to avoid RF interference between us, and we made sure to avoid working resonant frequencies of each other.

We, W8LT, arrived at about 9:30 AM and starting setting up our equipment. I brought my Yaesu FT-857D, portable Super Antenna (a vertical antenna), a Jackery (a portable battery with various interfaces for charging/powering devices), and a solar panel to attach to the Jackery. For W8LT, this was our set up. But, of course, something was missed when packing and that was the whip part of the antenna. It so happens that one of the legs for the Super Antenna will fit in where the whip goes, and surprisingly you can still tune it pretty darn close. We probably didn’t get out as far as we could have if we had the whip part, but it worked for a little bit.

W8YX thankfully brought a couple extra antennas, and one of them happen to be a vertical element. We, W8LT, switched to that for a while and had much better luck making contacts.

We aimed to stay until at least 6 PM, but we started packing up around 4:30 PM due to the bands that day not cooperating with us making contacts. We both had a minimum of 10 contacts each, so it was a successful activation for each club. Primarily, we operated under our club call signs, so folks from The University of Cincinnati only used W8YX and us from Ohio State only used W8LT.

While it wasn’t officially a contest between the two universities, W8YX did have more contacts during the day than W8LT. It was about 45 contacts for W8YX and 39 for W8LT.

Overall, we all had fun making contacts and getting out in nature. I’d like to see the two universities do this again.

Here are a few pictures from the day:

The “Dance Pavilion” that we rented for the day: