Yesterday, I completed my second activation of Heyburn Wildlife Management Area (US-8124). The warm, early spring weather prompted me to take some PTO and get on the air. The weather was near 80°F with gusty winds from the east and warm sunshine. I put in a last minute scheduled activation and hit the road.

Heyburn Wildlife Management Area (US-8124) Map

Heyburn WMA is an area surrounding Heyburn Lake west of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I decided to setup at the northeast most parking lot just off of OK-33. I arrived to an empty parking lot, and there were no other visitors during my entire activation.

I brought along my Elecraft KX-2 and my homebrew 40- to 10-meter EFHW. I easily deployed the antenna in a convenient tree with my arborist throw line. I had the feedpoint come down near my truck and decided to operate from the truckbed. I barely had any signal on my phone and could not load the POTA website to spot myself so I relied on the Reverse Beacon Network to spot me. I noticed my SWR was bouncing around a lot, and I think that was due to the wind.

On a whim, I choose to start on 10-meters and found an empty frequency. My first spot came through at 20:10 UTC. I had three hunters (one was DX!) answer my CQ in about 20 minutes, before I decided to switch to 15-meters. 15-meters was a lot busier; 20 minutes later I had nine more hunters in the log. Next I decided to go down to 17-meters where I got five more hunters. At this point, I had a little time left before I needed to head home for dinner. I debated going down again to 20-meters, but I have activated 20-meters at Heyburn before. Instead I choose to go back up to 12-meters. I got six more hunters in the log before I had to call QRT. In total I had 23 QSOs and another succesful activation.

My recent completion of the CWA Fundamentals course helped to improve my instant character recognition. I did have to ask for several repeats. It is always hard to tell if I had any busted calls, but this time all of them checked out on QRZ. There were a few hunters that did not have POTA profiles though so I am not sure how we came into contact. Overall, it was a great time and I plan to return to Heyburn for more activations in the future.