Cedar Hill State Park, Again K-2996

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I got outside Saturday afternoon to activate Cedar Hill State Park to practice my Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) skills in conjunction with Parks on the Aire (POTA).  The map below shows the locations of the other stations/people I worked over the radio from the park.

I'm a member of ARES,  North Texas Section, part of the national ARRL organization committed to providing communication services during emergencies.   My application for RACES - DALLAS is in the works, along with the SKYWARN training and completion of the FEMA NIMS IS-100b, IS-200b, and IS-700b courses.   

I was able to work 101 contacts from the park using my Yaesu FT-991a rig, and the ATAS-120 actively tuned antenna that I recently installed in my truck.  The radio was powered by a Bioenno12V, 30Ah LiFEPo4 battery and still had plenty of juice after running 100w for 2 hours.  

I used HRMS for logging on my $60 Evolve III notebook.  The LTE SIM card works very well, but the CPU is a  bit underpowered and HAMRS had trouble processing the realtime QRZ looks ups a few times.   

I also used my new lightweight / emergency comms Heil BM-17 headset with dynamic mic.   The fit was perfect and the audio was great - both on transmit and receive.

The weather was nice,  and all in all Cedar Hill is still one of my favorite parks to activate here around Dallas. 

73 Chris de WX7V








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