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One of the high points of my ham radio year is the time spent in Pennsylvania with my friends. It’s a tradition that began 40 years ago with a tent camping trip to Indiana County, PA. Over the years, we moved to other counties. The longest stretch was in Jefferson County, which ended after the 2025 Pennsylvania QSO Party (PAQP).

This year, our merry band returned to Cook Forest State Park in Forest County. It was more of an exploratory expedition allowing us to make plans for a more serious PAQP effort in 2027.  This was to be our first PAQP effort from a Parks on the Air® (POTA) park. We ran a county line operation from within Cook Forest back in 2005.

Cook Forest (US-1345/KFF-1345/US-PA-1345) is an 8,500-acre state park in northwest PA, and it’s a popular location for all types of adventures. The weekend of our visit was an extremely busy time in the park. There were hikers, people canoeing and fly-fishing, and many other activities. 

Our new location has lots of advantages over the previous one. Let’s look at a few:

• A POTA activation from the front porch: We could operate the contest while handing out a POTA reference to hunters.
• A change of scenery: Jefferson County had been fun, but after so many years, it was time for something new.
• Double-duty contacts: Contacts made during the PAQP could also count toward POTA awards when properly logged and submitted.
• Potential two-fer: We didn’t choose our Cook Forest location based on our closeness to the North Country National Scenic Trail (US-4239/KFF-5029). The trail does go through the park, and some parts of Cook Forest could indeed be a two-fer for POTA (WWFF does not recognize XX-fers). Do your research before claiming a two-fer.
• A different perspective on contesting: I wasn’t chasing a top-ten finish this year. Getting away, enjoying the surroundings, and making contacts was becoming more important than the score. Also, we used this trip to scope out the location and make plans which could improve our score in the 2027 contest.
• Good possibility of Nonexistent Cell Signal: Some will not agree with this one, but some in our party (myself included) spend a large part of our time being connected to our work and volunteer responsibilities. Being able to get away from cell/data signals is a huge plus when choosing our location for the year. We did have the included satellite feature on our iPhones which allowed us texting from the cabin and cellular connectivity was just a brief drive away. This would play an interesting part later in our story. 

Planning the Cook Forest adventure began earlier in the year, January to be exact. I drove up to the park to scope out available cabins and reacquaint myself with the lay of the land. Needless to say, the location passed our inspection, and the reservation was made for October. Regular campers will understand that reservations for most state park lodging need to be made months in advance, especially at the more popular locations.

Some of the statistics on our cabin for the weekend:

• Cook Forest actually covers parts of Forest, Clarion, and Jefferson counties.
• Our rented cabin was southeast of Route 36 running through Cooksburg, PA. Once you go more than a few hundred feet on River Road, you are in Forest County. If you cross the Clarion River on your right, you’d be in Jefferson County.  From analyzing Google maps, a possible county line location appears to be along River Road in one of the many pull-offs along the riverside. But, as with all location-based activations, do your own research. This is just what it looks like to me.
• Closer to Route 36, there is also a three-county line—a point where Forest, Jefferson and Clarion counties come together. What does this have to do with POTA? Absolutely nothing, but I do enjoy little pieces of geographic trivia like this. 
• Unlike our previous fully equipped cabin, the state park cabin required that we bring our own cooking utensils and bedding. That didn’t seem to be an issue, though. The last few weeks before departure were spent developing and refining a list of items we’d need—some to bring from home and others to purchase at the nearby grocery store.
• The unwritten rule for the weekend has always been that we do not discuss anything that might have been left off the list. We make do unless the item is so necessary as to require a special trip into town.

As we usually do, we left a couple days in advance of the PAQP so that we had plenty of time to relax and set up the station for the weekend. The weather was great for most of the weekend until later Saturday evening when the remains of Hurricane Isaias made their appearance as we were enjoying time around the campfire.

The station this year was very basic, consisting of my POTA go-box and a supplementary power supply. The contents of my go-box consist of my Yaesu FT-891, N3ZN CW paddle, and Heil PRO 7 Headset. The setup might be bare bones, but it’s still worlds ahead of the Kenwood TS-520 that we used in those early days.

Knowing in advance that spotting would be difficult, I registered my activation on the POTA website. When the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) hears my CW or digital signal, it is matched with my registered activation. Between that and just getting on the air and calling CQ, I did manage to get spotted before the contest. After the contest began, I didn’t worry about getting spotted. Due to the lack of cell signal, we were on our own for the most part.

Non-contest logging was done using Ham2K PoLo. You can read more about Ham2K PoLo in this OnAllBands article. Once the contest began, my logger of choice was the PAQP logger by N3FJP, but for troubleshooting, a switch was made to N1MM+.

During the first couple days at the cabin, I set up the station on a picnic table on the front porch. However, October evenings in the hills of PA aren’t known for being particularly warm. So, Saturday, when it was time to prepare for the PAQP, the whole station was brought indoors. We were able to snake the RG-8X feedline through the window.

The antenna this year was a very simple affair. I carry an EFHW in my go-kit, and it made for a simple antenna solution that is easy to set up and take down (important since it was raining when it was time to tear down). Deploying was easy. A throw-weight and some paracord was all it took to get the antenna over a limb about 30 feet up. This was a perfect setup that allowed me to deploy the antenna as a sloper.

The propagation conditions were kind of all over the place on this trip. It went from not great on Friday to great by Saturday afternoon. So, what does “not great” mean?

Well, on Friday afternoon, 20 was about dead, possibly due to a solar disturbance of some kind. 40M CW came to the rescue that day!  On Saturday, I could tell that things were a bit “off,” with 40M being pretty quiet. That didn’t last, though. By mid-afternoon on Saturday, 40 had rebounded nicely.

The PAQP runs Saturday from noon Eastern until 1 am Sunday morning. Then starts up again at 9 am on Sunday morning, then runs till 6 pm local time. I was glad that some 40M activity had returned, and I was able to make a small number of contacts.

But after dinner, it seemed that the bulk of the 40M activity had either gone to bed or retreated to 80 and 160 meters. Not being set up for those bands on this trip, we shut down. The decision to not gear up for 80 and 160 meters was due to the fact that I didn’t envision staying up until 1 am for the end of the first day. Also, only having the cabin until 10 am Sunday morning and losing that last day of operating made a better antenna setup seem pointless.

Seemingly by tradition, each year something breaks and requires some troubleshooting. This year was no different. The CAT connection between my FT-891 and the laptop began dropping after each contact or two. I performed the normal troubleshooting steps: checking cables, restarting the computer, etc. Then I began suspecting the software.

To test this required a drive back toward civilization for an upgrade to the N1MM+ software. Remember that lack of cell service I mentioned earlier? It became a little less appealing when I needed to update my logging software!

That’s another item for the list next year: Make sure that all logging programs are up to date! Once we returned to the cabin and the software had been ruled out, we decided that the likely culprit was the USB port on the FT-891. For the remainder of the contest, band and mode changes had to be made manually rather than by reading the info directly from the radio. Troubleshooting would have to wait for another day—likely two hours before leaving for PA in 2027!

So, Saturday night, we sat around and perused the stories of Phil, Dave, Keith, and George (names changed due to my bad memory) in the cabin journal. These guys came up to the cabin each year from 2021 (as far back as the journal went) through 2025 for hunting season. It was enjoyable reading about these four friends who came up each year for a weekend of deer hunting and watching Steelers football.

It reminds me of myself, Allen and Ben, who have shared the second weekend in October for many years.

They call the Pennsylvania QSO Party “The Friendly QSO Party,” and each year, it lives up to its reputation. This friendly atmosphere is one of the reasons I come back every year.

But there are always a couple of memorable contacts each year. This year, both came about because the callers had their logging software linked to QRZ.com. This prepopulates some of the user’s logging fields.

One fellow typed in my callsign and saw that his logger placed me at my home in Ohio. Once I gave him my exchange, Forest County, PA, he exclaimed “Oh, you’re with us!” and thanked me for the new county. The other asked why I’m in PA when QRZ says I’m in Ohio. I have a ready answer for these folks. I tell them that “Once a year, they allow me to remove my ankle bracelet and leave Ohio for a weekend.”

So, what did we learn this year? Quite a bit actually. In coming years, we’ll likely eat out more or prepare simple meals at the cabin.

The antenna system will be dipoles strung from a telescopic mast of the type sold at DX Engineering. These can be secured with guy lines or tied off to the front porch railing. The important thing is to be prepared regardless of which antenna setup we choose.

We’ll be planning to set up for operation on 160, 80, 40 and 20 meters. We have the room for it, and 2027 will be the year to make it happen!

Bear spray is a must-have at Cook Forest. We saw a couple of cubs playing a few hundred feet from the cabin. Mama bear was likely in the vicinity as well. Bear spray is an important thing to have when making a middle-of-the-night run to the bathroom.

With only 94 contacts in the log, the final stats were pretty lackluster this year. But it was still an enjoyable weekend of radio and porch-sitting!

Forty-seven contacts were made in the PAQP, and the rest were for POTA. I split the modes about 40/60% between phone and CW.

Once I returned to Ohio, I consolidated all the contacts from the contest and POTA, then submitted them to POTA and WWFF. This is easily done but varies depending on the park program. POTA is the easiest, employing a simple upload. WWFF requires emailing the log files to one of three upload managers.

You can do an activation like this too! A bit of planning is all it takes. Remember, sometimes the best part of a portable operation has nothing to do with amateur radio. Now, you know what I’m going to say next. Let’s get out there and activate something!

73 DE WG8X

The post Ham Radio Portable Operating Insights—Combining POTA with the Pennsylvania QSO Party appeared first on OnAllBands.