A “3-fer” is what the Parks-on-the-Air (POTA) community calls an amateur-radio activation from a site that consists of three park-type entities. On Saturday, October 9th, the SFTARC operated as a POTA 3-fer from Olathe’s Lone Elm Park, simultaneously activating three National Historic Trails: The Santa Fe, Oregon and California Trails. With three stations on the air simultaneously, SFTARC members let the rest of the world “visit” the Lone Elm Park over the air.
The closest contact was to N0AZ at the Ensor Museum in SE Olathe and the most distant was to OK1DX in the Czech Republic.
For this operation, a suite of Icom transceivers set up under the shade canopy of a row of tree in the historic section of Lone Elm Park was pressed into service: An IC-7300 on 40m SSB, an IC-746 on 30m and 17m CW and an IC 7200 on 20m SSB. A fan inverted Vee for 30 and 17m, a 20m vertical, a 40m inverted Vee and an 80m end-fed wire were our skyhooks to the rest of the world. The station was also listed in QST as a Special Event Station, but most of the stations we contacted seemed interested in the POTA aspect of the activation—particularly attractive because it was a 3-fer. Quite a number of contacts were made with stations around the country activating other POTA parks—those contacts being referred to as P2P contacts (park-to-park).
More than a dozen club members and a guest or two helped with the operation that was on the air from shortly after 10 am and ran up till 3pm. N3FJP Amateur Contact logging SW was used, with a slight modification made to the normal settings to better accommodate POTA. The SFTARC trailer was pulled into the park on Friday afternoon to allow SFTARC members the ability to begin productive setup activities shortly after the conclusion of the SFTARC’s monthly business meeting.
Lone Elm Park has been certified by the National Park Service as a historic site on the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trails. Some of the stations that we talked to got a brief history lesson about Lone Elm Park, learning that this site was a popular campsite for pioneers traveling west in covered wagons and also part of a Military Trail in the 1800s.
Participants left with the feeling that “it was a fun day.” Thanks to those who participated in the Lone Elm Operation, and to Olathe Parks and Recreation for keeping this part of our local history alive through there support of the park.