The Perfect Ham Radio Day—Roving Five Ohio State Parks

Hi everyone! This week let me tell you about a recent rove that began with one plan in mind, didn’t work out, morphed into a quite different plan midstream, and still turned out to be what I like to call a “Perfect Ham Radio Day.”

A few weeks ago, I hit the road as a rover for the Ohio State Parks On The Air (OSPOTA) Contest. This would be only the second time I’ve roved for OSPOTA.

OSPOTA had its beginnings in 2008 as a new activity for the then-fledgling Portage County Amateur Radio Service (PCARS). You can read more about OSPOTA on our website at ospota.org or in this recent OnAllBands article about the 19th Annual Ohio State Parks On The Air Contest.

I joined OSPOTA around 2013 as a board member to help with the tech side of things. What began as a simple website maintenance gig has grown to include log-checking. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed portable Field Day-type operating, and OSPOTA seemed to scratch that itch for me.

This year marked my 17th season participating in OSPOTA. I’ve operated from a number of parks over the years. For most of the past eight years, my go-to park has been Mount Gilead State Park in Morrow County. But this year, my plans to drag the camper over to Mount Gilead fell apart due to recovering from some surgeries. Plan B was to instead be a rover.

In case you’re wondering, a rover is a contest participant who lights up not one but several locations over the course of a contest. In the State QSO Parties, rovers will activate multiple counties. It’s the same in OSPOTA, but instead of counties, we light up Ohio state parks.

My plan was simple enough: begin at Quail Hollow Park, head north to Wingfoot Lake State Park, then northeast to West Branch State Park. After West Branch, I’d backtrack and hit them all again. On the return trip, I planned to break out the 80 meter antenna for more contacts. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite go as planned.

Quail Hollow was my first stop, and it has an interesting past of its own. Long before anyone showed up with a radio and an antenna, the property was farmland. It later became the country estate of railroad executive Harry Bartlett Stewart. Fifty years ago the Stewart family sold more than 700 acres and the estate to the State of Ohio for about half its appraised value, creating Stark County’s first state park. In 2016, the state transferred management of the park to Stark Parks, the Stark County park system. It still counts, though, as a state park in the eyes of OSPOTA and other programs.

Quail Hollow is one of two parks that I consider my “Home Park.” When I get tired of radio, there are plenty of other things to do. I’ve hiked part of the Buckeye Trail that passes through Quail Hollow. There are also bike trails and horse trails that get quite a bit of use.

The weather this year was not bad when I was there, but the radar picture told me that it wouldn’t last. After setting up the station in the cab of the truck, I was about 30 minutes late for the start of the contest, so I got to work making up for lost time.

By the time I needed to move on to the next park, I had a good start on the log. Several contacts were in other Ohio state parks. Conditions were great on 40 meters, and I was optimistic about a good score. The next park would be Wingfoot Lake State Park in Suffield.

My earliest memories of Wingfoot Lake were from the time it was a company park for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. I believe my family attended some reunions there during my childhood. My most vivid memory, though, was attending the Goodyear Hamfest there in the late 1970s. It was one of the best hamfests.

Goodyear’s connection with Wingfoot Lake goes back much further. The company purchased 720 acres there in 1916 for its growing airship operations. The lake was named for Goodyear’s familiar winged-foot logo, and a hangar, workshops, hydrogen plant, and landing field were constructed along its south shore. During World War I Goodyear even built blimps there for the U.S. Navy.

The north shore was later developed as a recreation area for Goodyear employees and their families. By the 1980s, more than 100,000 people were visiting the company park each year. Goodyear closed the park in 2006, and it became part of the Ohio state park system in 2009.

As I arrived at Wingfoot Lake, the rain was just beginning, and it didn’t improve during my brief visit. This doesn’t bother most rovers since we can usually operate from our cars. However, I didn’t feel like heading out in the rain to swap antennas. So, 40 and 20 meters were the order of the day at Wingfoot.

Before leaving the park, 21 stations wound up in my log. Modes were mixed between SSB and CW. I also worked several other Ohio state park stations. I would have loved to work more, but I needed to grab some lunch and head to my next stop: West Branch State Park.

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