Simplex Saturday: Week 6 - Taking a commanding lead (that I know of)

 For the 6th week in a row I made an appearance for Simplex Saturdays, sponsored by TARA. For all but one of those weeks I went up to the Foothills Parkway in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to operate. The over 2000' elevation certainly is advantageous when trying to get a large footprint on VHF/UHF simplex.

This week I had company as three other hams came up to operate and to converse about the event.

Michael, KQ4MKV and Darrin KQ4RAY were up on the parkway with me to try and get a few more contacts under their belt than what might have been if they'd stayed at their home QTH.

I found out about 3 weeks ago I could be using POTA (Parks On The Air) for dual event QSOs as the Foothills Parkway is part of the GSMNP which has the POTA designator of US-0034.

On the way up I ran in to a ham on another pulloff who was operating CW for POTA. I was so excited I forgot to ask him his name/callsign!!!

I got up to the #8 parking area and made a slight change in operating. Over the last few operations, I was operating from the back of the vehicle (mine or my wife's) and was basically operating out of the trunk space. This time I ran the coax from the quad-band Comet antenna I had into my Durango and temporarily placed the Yaesu Quad-band 8900 on the center console connected to the battery box instead of to the vehicle. This helped as it was a tad chilly due to the shift in time to an hour earlier last Sunday morning.

I also put word out on a few nets, Facebook, and even on a livestream I tested during a weather net Friday evening about Simplex Saturdays. I think it paid off as I started off strong with a few contacts and using POTA as a duel event brought out the park chasers.

I brought my GoPro to film but due to hectic activity with all the operators I contacted and spoke to in person I wasn't able to set up the cameras.

Unofficially, I made 48 contacts across 5 bands (10m, 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 70cm) but the contest did not include 10m initially, however I'm trying to convince them to use 10m, and I think they've counted my previous 10m contacts already.

Speaking of...I was trying to make local contacts on 10m and the 10m band was wide open on 29.600. I heard a station in Nevade (he couldn't hear me) and another somewhere in Mexico!

So far for now, I'm in the lead on the Simplex Saturdays contest log with 74 QSOs and Darrin has 2nd place with 20. These numbers do NOT include today's numbers, so I can't wait to see how it changes going into next weekend.

There's only 3 of us that have submitted logs thus far, and I've been encouraging others to submit. If they make just one contact, they can submit the log to be entered for a prize drawing in April 2026. So please join the fun. I've been having a blast going up to the mountains to operate!

Simplex Saturday: Week 1

The Tennessee Amateur Radio Association started up a special event that began last Saturday (4 October) where Tennessee stations can make contacts on VHF and up simplex frequencies (6m, 2m, 23cm. and 70cm):

Participants can download the log sheet (as an .xlsx) and then log their contacts, then upload them here to become eligible for prize drawings (prizes TBD) in April. 

I decided to head up to the Foothills Parkway to get a little altitude for making contacts. Even with ideal weather, I’ve never seen the parkway as busy as it was when I arrived as a flood of cars from a nearby car show in Sevierville all made for quite the scene.

Because of other commitments, I couldn’t make it to the overlook until after 7 p.m., technically after the “event” had ended. The listing showed “5 p.m. to 7 p.m. local time,” but I wasn’t sure how official that schedule really was as I had heard conflicting info on the times to operate. So I went ahead and continued up to the overlook anyway. Worst case, I’d still get to make a few QSOs from atop a mountain—and catch the sunset while I was at it. Still a win in my book.

When I finally reached the overlook, it was completely packed—cars, bikes, and muscle cars everywhere, many from the “Slammedenuff” show in Sevierville (more on that in a bit).

I managed to snag the last parking spot and backed in. Out came my folding chair, battery box, and my Yaesu 8900 quad-band mobile. I set up my mag-mount quad-band antenna (10m/6m/2m/70cm) and tried to tune out the steady parade of muscle cars roaring up and down the parkway, each seemingly in a contest to prove who had the loudest exhaust. One driver even treated everyone to a performance of "jake braking" down the hill, letting the exhaust backfire twice, re-accelerating briefly, and then repeating all the way down the road.

There were park rangers stationed nearby, though not directly at the overlook, which I thought would’ve been the better spot to have crowd control. Still, it looked like they had their hands full. It may be that due to the overwhelming numbers of cars, they didn't want to escalate a tense situation with their presence.

Back to the radio bit. My first contact with with John in Southeast Tennessee, and despite the mountains in between us, I had him at an S5 signal. We talked for a few minutes and I started hearing another station attempting to contact me. Being up on the top of a mountain does incur a lot of stations who can hear me but not the stations I'm talking to. Kinda like 10 meters!

I got to enjoy the sunset and although I only talked to 3 people, we went across all four bands of my radio for 8 contacts total. We even did 10 meters FM to try it out and two of the hams were able to reach me with no issue (again, other than the mountain!). I packed up after about an hour as I needed to get back home.

So now my mind is stirring on how to actually incorporate the quad-bander into the battery box! I want to mount the quad-bander on either the side of the box or even on the top. I'm thinking the side would work better, but I may look at building a completely different box entirely for this radio. 

A postscript to this, the cars that were part of the car show apparently were not getting the approval of the City of Sevierville, as they cancelled the 2nd day of the 2-day event. It looks as though the cars on the parkway weren't the only hooligans out of control, as incidents all across Sevier Co were overwhelming authorities. The event was not sanctioned by the city and there were warnings for participants to behave prior to the show. I'm sure the ones that were respectful were disappointed, but unfortunately those that think they are above the law decided to discover what the "Find Out" part was all about.

I'm just glad everyone at the overlook were (for the most part) behaved. A couple of visitors were asking about my radio setup. They were amazed I was talking to Chattanooga and thought I was on CB. If they only knew...