A couple of weekends ago, I operated the Michigan QSO party. I had originally planned to operate as a Rover in the Wisconsin QSO Party, but a late-season blizzard cancelled those plans. The original plan had been to start on Lake Michigan at the Wisconsin-Michigan border and work my way through the state’s northern tier of counties. Since that didn’t work out, I started at about the same spot, but instead activated the southern tier of counties of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

I started in Marinette County’s J.W. Wells State Park, where I did a POTA activation. The original plan was to set up a station on a picnic table. But the mid-April weather was still quite cold. After getting the dipole set up (using, of course, my trusty golf ball retriever , I didn’t fancy operating for an hour in the cold. So I operated instead from the mobile position in the back seat of the car, shown here.

Since most QSO’s were in motion and CW, I operated from this spot in the back seat, while my wife and daughter took turns driving.

I did activate another park, Bewabic State Park in Iron County. But instead of setting up the 40-meter dipole, I stayed on 20 meters an just used the Hamstick. Since I didn’t make it back to 40 meters after the first park, I had very few Michigan contacts, but I did manage to hand out some “rare” counties to other stations. My best DX was avid county hunter OM2VL in Slovakia.  I was QRP mobile, limited for most of the time to a single band, and didn’t plan on being a high scorer.  But I did manage just under 50 contacts in about 8 hours of operating, and had an enjoyable trip!!

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