Everything went well except the voice radio operations!
After hearing that some local folks had not hunted DC yet I thought I would stop by on my way to visit my folks. So at 5:45pm on a Tuesday I headed towards DC with an ETA of 7:30pm
The drive went great
The roads leaving DC were still pretty backup up, but it was smooth sailing into DC for me. When I got there most if not all the rush hour traffic was gone.
Parking went great
I knew that I was going want to avoid the Cherry Blossom areas as they were in full bloom which spawns many many many humans near them. So the plan was to get to Constitution Avenue and look for parking near the Ellipse or the Constitution Gardens. There were a few spots but I decided I didnt want to try the ellipse it being directly in front of the white house and me knowing I was going to try and get an 80m EFHW up.
I kept driving to Constitution Gardens and there were plenty of parking spots. Very close to good spots for Activations. See follow on comments for pictures of where I parked and operated.
Finding a spot to operate went great
The spot I found was less than 100ft away from where I parked. It was out of the way of everyone and had plenty of room for my 80m EFHW. The spot was beautiful and the sun was just setting. See follow on messages in this thread.
Setup went great
Tied the far end of the antenna off to a water bottle the Feed point near my back pack and lifted the center with an LD6 telescoping mast. I didnt forget anything, even remembered the VNA and used it to fold back the EFHW to get up into the voice portion of 80m
Finding an open frequency went okay
The down side to using 80m in the evening for relatively local communication to help people nearby hunt DC is that there are a lot of people on 80m talking locally because it works do well! So it was a little difficult finding an open frequency. But I did.
Calling CQ on 80m voice did not go okay
After listening for a bit and then checking if it was in use three distinct times, I started calling CQ and calling. Self spotted on Polo. Continued calling and calling and no response. Then there was a response in the form of DQRM someone holding down the key in cw mode. Luckily I didnt have headphones in. Giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe someone was tuning up. I waited for it to stop and then called CQ again. And that continuous wave tone came right back! Knowing that it was hard to find a frequency and being put out with the DQRM I thought to try ft8 I also wanted to check my propagation and get a view contacts.
FT8 on 80m went great
SWR was above 2 but below 3 having tuned it for the mid part of the 80m band so I kept it there to see what the propagation was maybe that was why no one responded. Self Spotted on Polo. Started calling CQ second call got a hit and then another and then another. Then just like that over 10 calls and the parks had been activated. Unfortunately none of the calls were KC1VOP one of the hunters that was trying to get to DC. So we thought to switch to voice on 40m
Antenna Reconfig went great
Disconnected the link on the EFHW that brought it down to 40m and with one adjustment to folded over wire it was resonant where I wanted it to be.
Calling CQ on 40m voice did not go great
Found a frequency with some difficulty although it wast as crowded as 80m, checked if it was in use, started calling CQ. However KC1VOP gave me a 11 through discord because he thought he might be able to hear me in his noise. So no contact there. I did continue for a little while calling CQ but did not here an responses. So again lets try FT8 on 40m
FT8 on 40m went great
Switched to FT8 put out a few CQs and the responses come rolling in. KC1VOP said he saw me once but then I was gone. He could see people that were very close to him contacting me. But not me. So we switched to FT4
FT4 on 40m went great
Switched to ft4 frequency, sent out a few CQs and got responses just not from KC1VOP
Really wanting to get a voice contact didnt go okay
Not wanting to strike out on voice I checked the Polo Spot pages and there were no 20m activators on voice to hunt. It was almost 10pm on a week night.
Cleanup went great
After giving up and planning to do it another time when KC1VOP was also in a park. The dropping temperature also probably affected my decision to pack up. But pack up was quick the only thing quicker was the walk to the car.
Edit:
22 total QSOs
14 on 80m ft8
4 on 40m ft8
4 on 40m ft4
