Ham Radio Portable Operating Insights—Combining POTA with the Pennsylvania QSO Party

One of the high points of my ham radio year is the time spent in Pennsylvania with my friends. It’s a tradition that began 40 years ago with a tent camping trip to Indiana County, PA. Over the years, we moved to other counties. The longest stretch was in Jefferson County, which ended after the 2025 Pennsylvania QSO Party (PAQP).

This year, our merry band returned to Cook Forest State Park in Forest County. It was more of an exploratory expedition allowing us to make plans for a more serious PAQP effort in 2027.  This was to be our first PAQP effort from a Parks on the Air® (POTA) park. We ran a county line operation from within Cook Forest back in 2005.

Cook Forest (US-1345/KFF-1345/US-PA-1345) is an 8,500-acre state park in northwest PA, and it’s a popular location for all types of adventures. The weekend of our visit was an extremely busy time in the park. There were hikers, people canoeing and fly-fishing, and many other activities.

Our new location has lots of advantages over the previous one. Let’s look at a few:

• A POTA activation from the front porch: We could operate the contest while handing out a POTA reference to hunters.
• A change of scenery: Jefferson County had been fun, but after so many years, it was time for something new.
• Double-duty contacts: Contacts made during the PAQP could also count toward POTA awards when properly logged and submitted.
• Potential two-fer: We didn’t choose our Cook Forest location based on our closeness to the North Country National Scenic Trail (US-4239/KFF-5029). The trail does go through the park, and some parts of Cook Forest could indeed be a two-fer for POTA (WWFF does not recognize XX-fers). Do your research before claiming a two-fer.
• A different perspective on contesting: I wasn’t chasing a top-ten finish this year. Getting away, enjoying the surroundings, and making contacts was becoming more important than the score. Also, we used this trip to scope out the location and make plans which could improve our score in the 2027 contest.
• Good possibility of Nonexistent Cell Signal: Some will not agree with this one, but some in our party (myself included) spend a large part of our time being connected to our work and volunteer responsibilities. Being able to get away from cell/data signals is a huge plus when choosing our location for the year. We did have the included satellite feature on our iPhones which allowed us texting from the cabin and cellular connectivity was just a brief drive away. This would play an interesting part later in our story. 

Planning the Cook Forest adventure began earlier in the year, January to be exact. I drove up to the park to scope out available cabins and reacquaint myself with the lay of the land. Needless to say, the location passed our inspection, and the reservation was made for October. Regular campers will understand that reservations for most state park lodging need to be made months in advance, especially at the more popular locations.

Some of the statistics on our cabin for the weekend:

• Cook Forest actually covers parts of Forest, Clarion, and Jefferson counties.
• Our rented cabin was southeast of Route 36 running through Cooksburg, PA. Once you go more than a few hundred feet on River Road, you are in Forest County. If you cross the Clarion River on your right, you’d be in Jefferson County.  From analyzing Google maps, a possible county line location appears to be along River Road in one of the many pull-offs along the riverside. But, as with all location-based activations, do your own research. This is just what it looks like to me.
• Closer to Route 36, there is also a three-county line—a point where Forest, Jefferson and Clarion counties come together. What does this have to do with POTA? Absolutely nothing, but I do enjoy little pieces of geographic trivia like this. 
• Unlike our previous fully equipped cabin, the state park cabin required that we bring our own cooking utensils and bedding. That didn’t seem to be an issue, though. The last few weeks before departure were spent developing and refining a list of items we’d need—some to bring from home and others to purchase at the nearby grocery store.
• The unwritten rule for the weekend has always been that we do not discuss anything that might have been left off the list. We make do unless the item is so necessary as to require a special trip into town.

As we usually do, we left a couple days in advance of the PAQP so that we had plenty of time to relax and set up the station for the weekend. The weather was great for most of the weekend until later Saturday evening when the remains of Hurricane Isaias made their appearance as we were enjoying time around the campfire.

The station this year was very basic, consisting of my POTA go-box and a supplementary power supply. The contents of my go-box consist of my Yaesu FT-891, N3ZN CW paddle, and Heil PRO 7 Headset. The setup might be bare bones, but it’s still worlds ahead of the Kenwood TS-520 that we used in those early days.

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