Testing Out the New POTA Prefix...

Over the last weekend POTA decided in its infinite wisdom to change a number of countries prefixes that lead off the individual park numbers.  Canada originally used "VE", as of Saturday we now use "CA". Yes, lots of confusion and grinding of teeth, and I certainly do not like the fact it was thrust upon us as a total surprise, and that the powers that be did not give anyone a heads up that this was happening, but we will get through it. 

One of the problems we all thought we would have is that our logging programs wouldn't accept the new prefix, but that has been disproved today with the activation of CA-5141 and CA-6003, and the successful uploading of the logs with absolutely no issues.

It was a gloriously sunny day today with the temperature sitting at +10C under blue skies.  I did the whole activation with the windows open in my truck, just like a summers day.....in early March, unheard of.

I took my time today and made 31 contacts in 50 minutes. I put 13 on 40m in the log, and another 18 on 15m.  There were 7 DX contacts into Europe, and 8 park-2-park contacts. It was just a great day, and I enjoyed myself and the slow pace of this activation.

The bands were in decent shape, but the QSB was very deep and signals very quickly disappeared forever. The propagation numbers were: SFI=140, SN=112, A Index=10, and the K Index=1.

As usual it was the KX3 at 10w, and Hamstick's on a mag-mount on the roof of my truck. Here's todays contact map:

Be Well, and Stay Safe Out There!