There are days we wake up and know that a major milestone awaits. August 22, 2022 was one of those days. My wife Cyndi and I were on a road trip to the northeastern US states. It’s unusual that she accompany on one of my crazy road trips but for this one she did. Almost definitely it was in hopes of seeing some of the kinds of things that this part of the country has to offer such as lighthouses, etc. And yes, we did do some of that and it was fun for both of us. But today was not about lighthouses, at least not to me.

A week before we had left our wonderful dog Ellie at our daughter Susan’s house and took off. While Ellie was less than thrilled I couldn’t have been more excited. This trip was going to finish up a couple of goals that had begun some years before. To complete them the only thing needed was this road trip.

The first goal was the one that had been started about 10 years before. It was to have a beer that was brewed in every state capitol. This goal was very much a personal one meaning no official rules or record keeping exists. Also, the beer just had to be brewed in the capitol city and did not have to be consumed in it. For me it was a fun little project that seemed to grow the closer I got to completing it. How many people in the world can say they have had a beer that was brewed in each of the US capitol cities? The list has to be extremely small and it is very likely that I am the only one who even cared about it. The real challenge to this was finding a beer that was actually brewed in the capitol city. But more on that later.

The second goal, and the one this blog will center on, is the Parks on the Air award for activating parks in 50 states. First, let me explain what “activating” a park means. Simply put, it is taking a ham radio station into a state or national park and making contacts with it there. To do this the station has to be portable and very much “bare bones” as compared to a home station that can be much more involved. An activator’s station almost never has a luxury such as an amplifier and is therefore limited to lower transmit power. Sometimes only 5 watts or less is used. Also, huge antenna towers don’t exist for the park activator. Indeed, such limitations dramatically increase the challenge and also the fun. Exactly how such a station is set up depends on the individual and there are countless ways to get on the air for an activation.

The other side of the coin are the “hunters.” They are the ones who the activators contact via radio. The activator typically uses the POTA system’s spotting page to let the hunters know which frequency and which park is being activated. The hunters use this to know where to look with the hopes they can hear the station who is in the park and then to be able to actually make contact. None of this is guaranteed.

The combination of activating and hunting is when an activating station contacts another activating station. That is called a “park to park” contact and to successfully accomplish this multiplies the challenges for both stations.

There are a lot of awards in Parks on the Air but perhaps the most sought after one is the award for activating all states. As I began traveling this had yet to be achieved. Nobody had been to every state and activated. There had been several hunters who had gotten the award for hunting them all but not for activating. To do that required being in the state and there were a lot of people who sought to accomplish it.

Jason Johnston, whose call sign is W3AAX, is the head of Parks on the Air and it was largely his vision that got it started. I got to meet him at the huge Dayton, Ohio Hamvention hamfest in May of 2022 and it was a huge honor for me. Come to find out he is a very humble man and seems to be much less impressed with himself than others are of him. This is definitely a trait shared by many of my favorite people. During that 3 day event I mentioned to him how close I was to accomplishing the goal of activating 50 and that I expected to do it around August.

After actually completing it I sent him an email asking if he remembered that conversation. His response is one I just won’t delete. It reads: “I DO remember meeting you, and having the conversation on how close you were. I was in such disbelief until I reviewed the stats. Beyond well done, and thanks for being such a great steward of our program!!”

Let me say this: Parks on the Air allows for a “wildcard” state if either the hunter or the activator has the District of Columbia in the log. Since I had indeed activated there it was only necessary for me to do it in 49 states to receive the award. Hawaii was the state not (yet) visited. That would happen about 8 months later and will be the source of stories yet to be told here.

At the beginning of this little ham radio odyssey I thought that it might be possible to be among the first 10 or so to earn the award but then the more time passed with nobody accomplishing it and the more states I had done, well, the idea of being the first to do it began to enter my mind. But truthfully, the expectations had become being among the first 5.

When we left our Illinois home on this trip only 7 states were needed to earn the Activated All States award and they were all in the northeast. Only one road trip was needed and waking up that morning in Massachusetts that number had been whittled down to 2, Rhode Island and Connecticut. And still nobody had earned the award. As astounding as it seemed, I was going to be the first to do it!

POTA has a Facebook group that I participate in and it is there many keep track of what is going on with regards to that little segment of ham radio. More than my share of pictures taken during my various park activations, etc., had been posted to that group. It’s a great resource in many ways. I could have easily posted there how close I was to accomplishing this goal. However, somewhere along the way I had become determined to be the first and the fear was that by making this information public would send someone out on a trip making them the first ahead of me. It would be fair to say that I had become more than a little irrational when it came to this award.

Of course as we drove through each state we had also stopped at a brewery in every state capitol with one exception. Montpelier is the capitol town of Vermont. It seemed so much more of a small town than a city and it was a very nice one. It had an exceptionally beautiful capitol building. The reason we didn’t stop into a brewery there is because there weren’t any. This was one of the four state capitol cities that didn’t have a brewery. Two of the others, Pierre, South Dakota and Jackson, Mississippi both had home brewer supply stores and I was able to have a locally brewed beer there. However, Montpelier didn’t even have that. To accomplish having a beer that was brewed in that city required me finding a home brewer. With some networking I was able to do that and had a very nice beer in the house of a home brewer. We then took them out to dinner after. It was the least we could do! Unlike Parks on the Air, there was no “wildcard” with this quest.

Activating Rhode Island is kind of a lost memory for me. Maybe I will have to ask my wife to remind me what happened there. With no disrespect to that state I had my mind set on Connecticut which was going to be the final state needed.

We woke up that morning in a beautiful little seaside town south of Boston and set the GPS to the Rhode Island park of K-2881, the WWII Veterans Memorial State Park. It was raining lightly there and quickly 21 contacts were logged. That made 49 states activated and only one more to go!

Dinosaur State Park, K-1663 is located just about dead center in the state of Connecticut and was chosen to be the park I activated. When Cyndi travels with me I try to find a park to activate that has something for her to do while I’m playing with my radio. This park offered an interpretive center for her to explore. Unfortunately we were there on a Monday and the center was closed on Mondays.

After leaving the park in Rhode Island the weather turned significantly worse. On the drive to Dinosaur we weren’t sure an activation was possible. Rain came down in torrents and at times visibility was minimal making driving dangerous. It seemed that the further we drove the worse the weather got and even the RainX on the windshield couldn’t keep it clear. The possibility of not being able to activate the park was being discussed and was a definite possibility. While I was not certain I could activate that day I was sure that we weren’t leaving the state until I had done a park!

For me to be the first person to earn this award is more than a little amazing. There are some hams who are extremely knowledgeable of the hobby. Such things as antenna theory, electronics designing, etc., etc., are far beyond me. If I were to describe my knowledge of such things I would put myself in the lower 1/3rd of all hams and that might be generous. Simply put my knowledge is on the low side. What I did know how to do well was to keep my station simple and to just keep traveling. Maybe I didn’t understand everything that was going on in my system but I did know that it worked well for me.

With only about 30 miles to go to the park the rain began to abate somewhat and with 10 miles to go stopped almost completely. It was suddenly looking good that today would indeed be the day!

When we finally reached Dinosaur State Park the rain had reduced to a light mist. Maybe this wasn’t ideal weather it was good enough. I immediately got busy setting up for my activation and Cyndi went looking around the park.

It has occurred to me the vast dichotomy with the history of where we were and what I was doing. This park is full of foot prints that were left by dinosaurs some 200 million years ago. Because of that it is an amazing place that takes the mind back to times that were so very different than those today. Here I was using a cell phone to spot myself on a computer based system that relied upon, among many other technologies, satellites to pass along information. What a difference a couple hundred million years makes! Say what you want about the good old days but I was happy to not have a Tyrannosaurs Rex trying to have me for lunch!

So, despite the light rain, the antenna was erected on top of my van, the radio plugged into the Lithium Ion Phosphate battery, and it was tuned to a frequency I found to be clear. It was time to grab the microphone and begin. Nerves, excitement, and even some adrenaline were all evident as I spotted myself on the POTA spotting page. I went to work. Typically I began an activation by contacting a few other activators park to park. This lets me know everything is working the way they are supposed to. And on that activation I did just that with W0AP who was in North Dakota. All was working as hoped.

To have a “legitimate activation” requires making at least 10 contacts from a park. The 10th at Dinosaur was W5LGK who lives in Georgia. Let there be no doubt that there was a celebration that happened immediately after and it continued for some time. A few who had been listening offered congratulations and, well, I couldn’t help myself by mentioning it more than a few times. At some point my wife showed up and took a few pictures of me with a microphone in hand and a huge smile on my face. I remember once re-spotting myself on the spotting page with “AAS” celebrating the event. Of course, “AAS” was for Activating All States. Later Julie, WT8J, who is the POTA mapping representative for Michigan and also in charge of social media sent me a screenshot of it. I was thrilled to see it and the sight continues to bring fond memories of a goal achieved.

Later while looking at the log of the 34 contacts made I saw W1AW. That is the huge and very famous station on the premises of the Amateur Radio Relay League in Newington, CT. It is the primary headquarters of United States ham radio. That contact was made only 8 minutes after the 10th so apparently I was still more than a little pumped up. How cool it was to have made a contact with the ARRL headquarters only minutes after earning the Activating All States award!

That evening we stopped in Hartford, CT which of course is the capitol city and had a beer that was brewed there. The following day found us in Trenton, NJ which is another capitol city that doesn’t have a brewery. Again networking enabled me to find a home brewer. This was the 50th state for that goal. Needless to say it was a good week!