[FCARC] OSPOTA is coming up September 11

[Craig Szczublewski]

Hi folks, for those not in the know, OSPOTA, or Ohio State Parks On The
Air, is coming up on September 11.  The contest runs from 10 am to 6 pm and
the club has been activating Harrison Lake State Park for the past few
years. The multiplier for the contest is other State Parks in Ohio, but any
and all QSOs can be logged and used as contacts against those multipliers.
We usually set up a few rigs and encourage any club members to come out to
play on HF for the day.  In recent years, we combine this with an
end-of-summer cookout around 1 pm.  That is still the running plan for this
year.

Now, for the change in plans.  We usually set up at the Marzolf shelter
house on the south-west corner of the park, but with the pandemic still
raging earlier this year, the reservation system for the park was not
online until a few months ago, and the short answer is that I simply forgot
to book it.  This presents a slight challenge as all of the shelter houses
are booked for that Saturday, but this situation is not anything we can't
work through.  We know of a couple of picnic areas which "are first come
first serve", one of which is right beside the Marzolf area, alongside Co
Rd M, one is over by Co Rd 27 on the south side of the lake.  A small
generator should be all we need for the event.

We plan to scout these areas out next weekend to make sure they will meet
our needs.  For inclement weather, we should be able to put up an EZ-UP or
two.  Further updates as we have them, but we still plan on activating the
park.

Apologies to all, I normally reserve this in the spring, and the
reservation system was not accepting anything.  It completely slipped my
mind by early summer.

More information on OSPOTA can be found here: https://ospota.org/


-- 
Craig Szczublewski / KD8KBU