Activating the last park of Massachusetts started more as an informative Discord session of, “What if?” than an actual plan. In the 1-Derland Discord, where a lot of Ham Radio Crash Course Discord Members of call region 1 find themselves, a small discussion broke out about Parks on the Air (POTA) and any parks that have yet to be activated. Sunderland Island Wildlife Management Area was officially introduced to me.

A month before the actual activation, I had done my first activation at US-1712 Ross Pond State Park, and that was my first ever activation of a park ever. 63 QSOs from the top of a park that I knew like the back of my hand. Easy activation. Prior to that, I had hundreds of QSOs as a hunter…. It couldn’t be that hard, could it? I jokingly said later that day after my first activation: 

16 days later, I activated Bluff Point State Park by transiting there via a motorized dingy while hanging out with my in-laws. I added water. With a successful activation of a park that traversed much choppier water over a longer distance, now it was just a waiting game to have a reason to go to that side of that state to activate the park.

July 19^th came with little fanfare, and my POTA bag was packed like it always was, ready to be grabbed and walked out the door. On this day, my wife informed me she would be heading up to a horse show near Northampton, MA, and some other family members of mine would be going. My Dad with an HT opted to travel with me to Sunderland Island Wildlife Management Area to act as a safety watch (which, considering the passing of a fellow ham that week due to a lack of safety was a concern of the community). Before arriving, I had scouted with Google Maps to understand the terrain and have an idea of a landing area, and heard from a few people like Perry (W1GRD) who wished me luck in between comments of envy, after all, I was activating the last inactivated park in Massachusetts. Before me, 440 other parks had been up for grabs and taken, but this one evaded activation for reasons I was soon to find out.

Upon crossing the bridge towards the town with the boat launch, it became almost immediately apparent: The Connecticut River was experiencing a drought. I could see muddy banks surrounding the island, and the currents didn’t seem very fast, and across most of the river, it seemed very shallow. Perfect for a kayak. Once we got to the drop off, my gear, an Icom 7300 and a Powerwerx 20aH battery that would be hooked into a 40m OCF dipole (a dipole that previously hung at my house and got me to over 175 DXCC) was packed and ready to go. I opted to bring my 31 foot Jackite windsock pole and a 20m EFHW as a backup just in case I couldn’t find a place to setup. Overkill in hindsight.

Kayaking across the 300–600-yard distance was easy. The hardest part was keeping my bag dry, and not tipping over since I was very top-heavy with the amount of gear I had on me. But once I got to the island, landing was a muddy bank that I walked onto, and from there it was just a matter of finding a dry spot to setup on that had a good (enough) take-off angle. I didn’t scout too far on the island, instead, I found a nice area on the west side of the island and quickly tossed up the dipole into a tree and setup camp on a muddy bank of the island. I wanted to go up onto the island proper, but as you can probably see from the photos, the banks were extremely steep, and almost 30 feet up.

As for the activation, it went as I expected for the Support Your Parks weekend. A lot of park-to-park callers, and a few DX called in as well. I was glad to see for the most part that I had a low noise floor and was able to make out just about anyone who called to my station. Originally the plan was to run 20 meters on SSB until the battery gave out, but after some discussion with fellow activators, I was asked to also include 40 meters, and also run 20m FT8, but also to check 6m and 10m based on my capabilities. Sadly, neither 10 meters or 6 meters had any activity, and 40 meters had little activity. Additionally, I didn’t plan to activate on CW at all, but after thinking (and baking) in the sun for several hours, I committed to at least 10 contacts via CW to say I activated the park all modes. After almost 4 hours, I had used 17.850 aH of my 20aH battery, and decided to call it quits. In the end, I got 134 contacts in the log, and went home happy knowing I got my name on an all-time new park.

I had a few lessoned learned this activation. One was to be careful tossing weights up into trees to hang a dipole. I yanked the weight down and it collided with my knee; This is an injury I am still dealing with to current date with a lot of bruising and soreness. Second: timing is everything. If it was a wet summer, I doubt I would have been able to make it onto the South Island. Maybe the North Island was an option but for the ease of this activation I went with the path of least resistance. With a ton of wet weather, I forsee that landing on the island might be a lot harder with the currents, however with ahigh water level, getting on the island’s top might be possible. Finally: mud is miserable. I wound up sinking in a few inches every fifteen minutes or so into the wet bank which made for an uncomfortable activation. Lucky for me, I had a tripod chair and a backpack to put all my gear on.

Would I do this park again? Maybe, if the stars aligned, but there is a reason this park hasn’t been touched until now. Parking is limited and busy. Getting to the WMA is tough on a good day and probably impossible on a bad day. But, if you’re one that wants a challenge, this is park is the park for you.