by Thomas (K4SWL)

On Monday, September 22, 2025, I visited my father in Hickory—in the foothills of North Carolina—and on the way home, I found myself with about an hour to spare. Naturally, that meant one thing: Parks On The Air (POTA) time!

I first thought about stopping by Tuttle Educational State Forest since I hadn’t been there since June. Unfortunately, this time of the year, they’re closed on Mondays. That left me with several other good options—including Table Rock Fish Hatchery and South Mountains State Park, neither of which I’d visited in some time—but those detours were just a bit too far for the time I had available. So I decided on Lake James State Park, heading to the Paddy’s Creek area.

Lake James State Park (US-2739)

It was a beautiful day—and keep in mind, this activation took place in September. My field reports are a little out of order right now because I prioritized publishing my Bug-Out Month activations in October. I still have a few of those videos coming, but this report was from that lovely transitional period when the first hints of fall color were starting to show.

Lake James was peaceful and quiet that Monday. Kids were in school, folks were at work, and—truth be told—I probably should’ve been too. But instead, I was outside playing radio, which I consider a *much *better use of my time!

Side note: At the time, I was still recovering from some lower back issues, though I was feeling much better. In fact, just the day before, my wife, my friend Vlado (N3CZ), and I activated the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site (US-0804) after attending a matinee performance of Murder on the Orient Express at the Flat Rock Playhouse.

Previous day: An unflattering KH1 selfie from the previous day.

It was such a fun day—and that activation was my first real outing since my back had started improving.

I think Vlado fell in love with the KH1 that Sunday.

Vlado and I ran the KH1, which made for a super lightweight setup.

Making it Interesting…

If you know me, you know I like to shake things up when I go to the field—experimenting with different antennas and radios, rotating gear just to see how it performs in real-world conditions. For this activation, I decided to take my Elecraft K2 into the field. I hadn’t used it for a couple of months at that point. You’ve probably seen plenty of the K2 during Bug-Out Month (since it traveled with me quite a bit), but this was the first time I’d set it up in the field for a while, and it felt great to have it back on the table.

Indeed, you’ve seen it so much lately because this earlier activation made me realize how deeply I love this fine QRP radio.

To make setup easy on my back, I paired the K2 with an antenna that wouldn’t require tossing a line into a tree. Even though I was feeling much better at the time, I was still being cautious about twisting or bending my back the wrong way.

So I used my Elecraft AX3 portable antenna—one I’d been relying on quite a bit over the previous couple of weeks. Interestingly, this was the first time I’d ever paired the K2 with the AX3.

One Watt? Why Not?

Note that the power indicator displays only one LED segment!

And just to make things even more interesting, I decided to push the limits a bit. Since it was a Monday and I expected fewer hunters on the bands, I wanted to see if it was possible to complete a full activation using the AX3 at just one watt of output power.

The idea actually came from a comment I’d recently received—someone claimed the AX3 was basically a dummy load. I get remarks like that all the time, usually from folks who’ve never used these antennas in the field for activities like POTA or SOTA. Sure, the AX3 (and antennas like it) are very compromised. I’d never use one for contesting or DXing from home—but in the field, when you’re the DX, you can absolutely make it work. This is especially true if, like me, you live in the eastern half of North America, where your propagation footprint includes many amateur radio operators. Your chances with compromised antennas decrease when you are in more geographically remote areas of the world.

With that in mind, I dialed the Elecraft K2 down to 1 watt of output power, got everything set up, and was ready to find out what would happen next.

It was time to hit the air!

Gear

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Radio and Battery

• Elecraft K2
• Bioenno 3 Ah LiFePo Battery (Model BLF-1203AB)

Antenna System

• Elecraft AX3 package
• AX1/AX2 KE8PTX Clamp Mount (print your own or buy at Tufteln)

Key and Key Cable

• Begali Traveler
• Retractable Key cable and additional RadioShack 3.5mm patch cable

Pack

• GoRuck GR1 USA (21L)

• HEROCLIP Carabiner Clip (attached to my backpack)

Logging

• Rite In The Rain Top Spiral Notebook (small 3×5 size)
• GraphGear 0.9mm 1000 Automatic Drafting Pencil

Camera Gear

• **DJI OSMO 4 **action camera with Joby Telepod Sport Tripod

On The Air

With my K2’s power output set to a sky-warming 1 watt, I started calling CQ POTA.

Keep in mind, at one watt into a compact 4’ whip antenna, I would not be experiencing pileup city. My guess was that I’d be hearing less than half the number of hunters who would normally call me.

I feel like POTA gives us an opportunity to experiment—it’s a radio activity, not a life-or-death situation, (and again) not even a contest—so this sort of thing is immense fun for me. Of course, if I couldn’t make any contacts at one watt, I could always increase my power until hunters could hear me.

Fortunately, I never needed to do this.

On 20 meters, I logged a total of six stations in six minutes. One station per minute is what I would expect from a normal activation.

The hunters stopped calling and, since I wasn’t in a major rush to head back up the mountain, I decided to attempt making contacts on 12 and 15 meters. Unfortunately, there was no activity on those higher bands, so back to 20 meters I went.

I then worked an additional six hunters in twelve minutes—thus, one contact every two minutes. Again…a very decent pace!

Finally, I decided to hit 30 meters—keep in mind, this is the least effective band for the AX3. Yes, I can achieve a good SWR, but four feet of whip for a 30-meter wavelength band is incredibly inefficient.

Still, I started calling CQ POTA, and I eventually worked KE2EEQ in New York for a second time (thanks, Gabriel!).

With thirteen contacts in the log, it was time to pack up and head back home. This one-watt activation was in the books!

QSO Map

Here’s what this five-watt activation looked like when plotted out on a [QSO Map.](https://www.qsomap.com” target=) Click on the map image to enlarge.

Here are the distances from my grid square to each hunter (click to enlarge):

Activation Video

Here’s my real-time, real-life video of the entire activation. As with all of my videos, I don’t edit out any parts of the on-air activation time. In addition, I have YouTube monetization turned off, although that doesn’t stop them from inserting ads before and after my videos.

Note that Patreon supporters can watch and even download this video 100% ad-free through Vimeo on my Patreon page:

Click here to view on YouTube.

Woo hoo!

This was heaps of fun for me. Sure, I’m not going to make every activation a QRPp activation, but this one certainly reminded me why I love experimenting with low power.

After all, in the true spirit of amateur radio, I used the least amount of power to get the job done. No one can accuse me of unnecessarily polluting the spectrum—ha ha!

If you’ve never attempted QRPp—whether with or without a compromised antenna—I highly advise it. Pick a day when you have a bit of extra time on your hands and, unlike me, give it a go on a weekend when the hunters are out in full force. You’ll find it’s highly addictive and awfully fun to do so much with so little!

Thank you

As always, thank you for joining me during this activation!

I hope you enjoyed the field report and my activation video as much as I enjoyed creating them!

A special thanks goes out to those of you supporting the site and channel through Patreon, and the Coffee Fund. While support is never required—my content will always be free—I truly appreciate it.

Through Patreon’s connection with Vimeo, I’m able to share ad-free, downloadable versions of my activation videos, along with the occasional exclusive video and frequent audio dispatches. Vimeo also doubles as a secure backup for my video files.

Thanks for spending part of your day with me! Have a brilliant weekend, friends, and, above all, be kind.

Cheers & 72, Thomas (K4SWL)

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