As you go west in the Upper Peninsula, just before reaching Wisconsin you will see one of Michigan’s largest state park, Porcupine Mountains State Park. The park also known as “The Porkies” and is nearly 60,000 acres. Given the size of the park there are very few roads providing access to most of the park and only some of the few more popular locations are easily accessible by car. Much of the park is accessible through wilderness trails, some ranging from half a mile while others extend out for miles with large changes of elevation for more advanced hikers. The park also features a number of remote hike in style rustic cabins. One of the most visited locations of the park is called Lake of the Clouds and is known as one of the most beautiful scenic overlooks in the state.
Given the size of this park there are not as many easy to go to POTA activation locations as most would expect but it does not seem to stop this park from getting activated frequently. For most of my activations my current setup includes more than a few items that need to be carried out to each site including my IC-7300 box, battery box and vertical antenna. I don’t mind lugging the gear a few hundred feet from my vehicle but with my current portable station, I prefer to setup within a few hundred feet of my vehicle. From inspecting satellite imagery and from driving through the park I determined that setting up at one of the two roadside pull of areas at the north end of the park and just past the park entrance would be the best location to deploy at. Both roadside pulloffs are located on Lake Superior and offer some but not an abundance of room for parking or setting up. If its a busy day in the park there is a good chance both of these roadside parks maybe taken. During a stop during the middle of the day, both roadside parks were fully utilized so we determined it would be best to stop in later in the day.
When we started the day, the shores of Lake Superior had an impressive coating of of fog that blanked the coastline. By the time of deploying the radio we were less than an hour from sun set and the mosquitoes were already starting to bite but there was still some day light left.
I powered up the radio on 20m and spun the VFO only to find out that the band was nearly dead. I setup the loading coil onto my telescoping whip and found much more activity on 40m where I would find an open frequency amongst the packed band. Unlike my activation from Copper Harbor, US-3311 from the roadside pull off there was a faint cellular signal. A sufficient enough signal for me to self spot myself at that park.
This activation was a bit more short lived and lasted around 40min but took more effort that my previous activations for the week. I will admit my portable antenna setup is a bit compromised as I used a 17ft telescoping whip that requires a loading coil to tune up on 40m. From looking at the map of contacts it also become obvious that I did not get any contacts to the west due to the time of day and sun setting to the east.
While I was still getting contacts near the end I had a larger higher powered station move in close on me and at the same time the sun was starting to set, it was time to start tearing down the equipment.
Eventually I would like to build a more portable kit and activate from one of the parks more remote cabins deep within the park at some point in the future.
’73 and POTA on!
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