Carl W8WZ

Winter Field Day 2026

Winter Field Day (WFD) 2026 was the second Winter Field Day for the Pinecone Amateur Radio Club (PARC); the club having formed shortly before the event in 2025. In 2025, Brantley K4CBW and John K4EB operated together from a rented cabin at Morrow Mountain State Park in Western North Carolina. We decided not to duplicate that effort in 2026 because, under John’s leadership, the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society was supporting an ARISS contact between a local school and an astronaut on the International Space Station that week. John, Brantley, and Carl were all involved in that effort and therefore didn’t have the time or energy to travel far for a WFD event the same week as the ARISS activation.

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Parks On The Air (POTA) in Washington, D.C.: How to Earn the Cheetah Rover Award

Some friends of mine recently move to Washington, D.C. and invited me to visit them just before Christmas. Knowing that a visit to the nation’s capital is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy POTA due to the high density of national parks and monuments, I added a day to my visit dedicated totally to doing POTA. On 22 December 2025, the shortest day of the year, I spent 5 hours completing 15 activations using an Elecraft KX2 transceiver and two different telescopic whip antennas. Below is the plan I used. It is hoped that this article will help others interested in planning their own POTA rove to DC.

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