I came home from a bit of a longer run of work trips last week.

My beautiful wife and I had planned on getting out and doing an activation. Truthfully, I don’t know why she enjoys tagging along for these activations but she does, and it’s awesome!

Prepping the gear

I decided I wanted to give the TenTec R4020 a go at an activation. I normally operate the TX500 but I’ve really been wanting to put the R4020 on the air at a park.

I recently designed and 3D printed a case for the R4020, so I felt better about carrying it in a pack.

Antenna(s)

I’ve been really leaning in on wire antennas over verticals as much as possible recently. I got way too attached to the MC-750 and have been wanting to try something different. Given everything here was pack in, I went with the classic wire EFHW.

My EFHW is cut for 40 Meters (giving me 40, 20, 15, 10 meters) but also with a 30 Meter link.

I also brought along the ZM-2 tuner, and an EFRW, again cut for 40 meters. I find this has become my backup antenna configuration for when needed.

And of course we can’t forget the POTA 20 Mast.

Getting a late start

So we had planned on swinging by Cabela’s and grabbing a few things, then heading to a park. The conversation quickly shifted from a “let’s go find a park” to “let’s go do a bit of hiking.

As such, I really needed her to be equiped a bit better. Specifically with something better for walking. Also, my wife is a bit of a mosquito magenet and becon all rolled into one. It’s been a wet few days here with rain pretty much everyday, so I expected quite a bit of annoyance from the bugs.

We found her a decent pair of trail/hiking pants, insect repelant of course, and actual hiking boots!

After our shopping trip, we set out to Brandywine Creek State Park | US-1732 in Northern Delaware.

We arrived and began our hike in, uneventfully. It was actually quite pleasant. The weather wasn’t terrible in any direction. This being Delaware in the first week of September I was quite surprised. I’d ordinarily expect high humidity and heat.

We hiked about 2 1/4 miles into the park, all the time trying to find some space to setup an antenna. This area of trail is fairly dense with trees and finding anywhere to stretch out the EFHW was proving to be a bit of a challenge. Arguably, I could have strung this an antenna of the trail but why not keep exploring.

While hiking I noticed one of the trail markers said something to the effect of National Park Lands with an arrow in the direction of our trail. To be perfectly honest, I had no idea Delaware had any National Park land at all. So this was a surprise. I didn’t think to grab a picture at the time. After getting back, I realized we had inadvertantly hiked into First State National Historic Park | US-0733. This park is marked on the POTA map as being in New Castle, along the Delaware River. I hadn’t realized this but this park has areas all over the state. So being the honest sort, I’ve logged my activation as the proper park I was actually in.

I guess I need to apologize to those that saw the spot and thought I was activating in US-1732. Again this was an honest mistake I only figured out what was going on and how this was layed out after the fact.

We heard some water and decided to veer a bit off our original planned trail to see what it looked like. After finding the stream, we found a nice place nearby the stream to setup the antenna. Perfect.

Setting up the antenna

The area was a bit more open than most of the trail we’d been on, but still with some tree cover.

We sat our bags down and I pulled out my cheapo stool.

The antenna went up my POTA 20 mast and I plugged in the R4020, key, and keyer.

The POTA 20 Mast is somewhere in the trees, with the EFHW deployed in a sloper behind the camera.

The R4020 has an internal memory keyer but it doesn’t allow you to record custom memories. It’s pre-configured to just allow you to record your callsign and will create a CQ from that. Since this was POTA, I wanted to send “CQ POTA N2OEF” not just the pre-programmed “CQ CQ CQ DE N2OEF N2OEF N2OEF”. So the external keyer (cheap from Amazon) was necessary.

The activation

I started my activation on 20 Meters and almost immediatly worked NN0TE with a great signal from MN!

After several more minutes of calling, I managed to work KG5DKG with a decent signal as well. and thus began the long repeated CQs with no responses.

It was at this point that I decided maybe I should try 40 Meters. But there was a slight issue. I couldn’t remember for the life of me how to change bands on the TenTec radio!

Out came the TX500 to finish the activation off with a flurry of quick QSOs on 40 meters, all with very decent signal reports.

I ended the activation with 14 QSOs after about 40 minutes of operating.

Equally as important, we ended our day with a 2.61 mile hike, spanning 10 floors (according to my Garmin watch)

And best of all Sushi for an early dinner!

“thats a nice boulder”

Decent RBN spots on 20 Meters,but where are all the hunters?

TenTec 4020 and 3D printed kneeboard

Gear Used Today