Kayak Mobile: A Quick Start Guide For Hunting POTA Anywhere
Radio and the outdoors belong together like peanut butter and jelly. One trip to a secret lake proved you can hunt Parks-on-the-Air from just about anywhere these days. There really is only one message to be gathered from this pretty useless post…bring your radio with you!
We have walked around this small little lake in Massachusetts plenty of times, but have never kayaked it…well because it seemed too small…
But on our last walk, I noticed that a ranger on a motor boat was able to get under the bridge to the other portion of the lake. You really can’t tell how from the land. This kinda stuck in my mind, and with this latest heat wave, AA1F and I packed the boats into our van. These 12 year old Ocean (brand name) kayaks have served us very well!
We can never help playing around in egresses like this. I mean, who doesn’t want to pretend there is a ghost in there??
“OOOOHHHHHAAAAAAAAHHHHHAAHHHHHHHAAAAAA”
That is a beach with a bunch of people swimming, playing, and generally having a good time now that 2020 is safely in the rear view mirror.
I highly recommend sit-on-top style kayaks for those who are more interested in playing in the water than serious touring.
Though for what it’s worth, AA1F and I used these on a five-day excursion down Lake George a few years back. We lashed all of our gear to the bow and stern. The Ocean Frenzy kayaks are extremely stable boats and made to handle waves (although once they do start to tip, there is no correcting it, you are going over).
Here is a trick we use: We always keep a line on the bow and stern. When we want to jump in the water, we tie the paddle to one of the lines. We hold on to the paddle and just swim around. Another great feature of sit-on-top kayaks is the ability to get in and out of them.
The radio picture is no joke…we heard a few operators activating POTA from the summit of Mt. Wachusett. Their signal was very strong when they pointed their yagi toward us. We were not able to make the qso though. I still tried to contact them while swimming. A new personal first!
Another fun radio adventure! Everything shoved back in the van, and away we went!
Yours,
KM1NDY