This was a day when the stars aligned and everything went perfectly, the day exceeding expectations in every way.
I needed to drive to central California for a family event and hoped to work in some radio time en route. I had spent the night in Klamath Falls, OR, and left my hotel about 30 minutes before sunrise. Just past the California border, you drive through the Butte Valley National Grasslands (K-7476). I selected an operating position on Indian Point Road, about 10 minutes outside the town of Dorris, CA.
I arrived a few minutes before sunrise. It was below freezing but there was no wind. The skies were clear with a half moon, and the view was spectacular.
I began, as is now my habbit, by searching for P2P QSOs before spotting myself and calling CQ. I had worked a few stateside stations before I notices strange calls in the pile. They had that peculiar, watery sound of signals coming over the poles, and I had soon logged an Italian station. I counted myself very lucky, but soon enough I was being called by an OH1, and then another Italian ham. This seemed like extraordinary luck to me, and only later did I learn how this happened.
Jess (W6LEN) had worked me and it turns out that he is active in the World Wide Flora and Fauna program. The WWFF reference for this park is KFF-4528, which had never before been activated. Jess spotted me on the WWFF site and that is when the Europeans began looking for me. He sent me an email explaining all this and asked me to submit my log to the WWFF site so participants in that program could get credit for working me. No changes whatsoever were needed to my POTA log, and WWFF is well set up to absorb POTA logs. I was happy to do this.
| Date/Time | 2023-2-12 15:40-16:16 |
| Frequency | 20m – 14.063 MHz |
| Rig | IC-7300 @ 100W |
| Antenna | 17′ whip |
| QSOs | 24 |
