US-2678 Silver Lake State Park

Earlier in the day I'd spent time activating US-4913 Hodgman State Forest in Amherst, New Hampshire, and before that I'd been wandering the grounds of the New England Amateur Radio Fest over in New Boston, not far from Manchester. I live close to Providence, Rhode Island, and it was a long enough journey to NEAR-Fest that I decided to sweeten the deal and bring along the POTA gear for a few activations.

Hodgman, about 20 minutes away, was quite the adventure. It is tiny (just 8 acres) and is tucked into essentially a residential area. I didn't feel like I could operate CW there without attracting unwanted attention. Silver Lake is the opposite, a classic New England lakeside park, quiet and pristine, especially in October, when I was there. In the summer Silver Lake can be crowded with folks seeking relief from the heat, but in the fall, especially late fall, you pretty much have the place to yourself.

Parking is easy here, with enough spots to easily handle the rush crowds of July. In season it'll cost you $4 to park, but in the off season it is free. Parking at the far end of the lot (that's my car in the foreground of the photo) will put you closer to the trailhead if you plan on hiking in.

This is a relatively large recreation area, and so you will find amenities such as snack bars, toilets, water toy rentals, and the like, but keep in mind that the park is about the lake, so in the off season nothing is open except for picnic tables and grill sites, either of which would be a nice place to operate from.

Once you are away from the beach the terrain slopes upward into a forested area with a mix of pine and hardwoods. You can walk all around the lake, and the trails are well-marked and maintained. The trees are relatively close together, but you aren't going to run into pure scrub as you'll find at other nearby sites. They are tall, too, so you are going to find plenty of spots to hang a wire.

I didn't have a wire on this trip, instead I'd brought a 20m hamstick dipole a single 10m hamstick – I had bought the mate at NEAR-Fest earlier in the day. So, two dipoles. When you walk into a forested area like the one here at Silver Lake, with mature, tall pines and beech especially, you are going to find lots of long, straight snags and branches to use as antenna masts. Here's one that was straight as a ruler and easily 20 feet long...sadly it was just a little too heavy to get up in the air!

You can see quite a few more branches down in that photo, all good candidates. I picked one about 12' long to use for the dipoles. It was much easier to move around, and I zip-tied the dipole bracket to the top, then wedged the bottom into a vee-shaped snag that held the whole thing vertical. I love putting up dipoles this way, and as a bonus you can rotate the antenna, which I typically do a few times during an activation.

I'd struggled earlier in the day at Hodgman SF to make ten contacts. A large flare was impacting Earth and the signal absorption was pretty severe. At Hodgman half of my paltry dozen QSOs were DX, and here at Silver Lake I stared at the FT8 screen calling CQ over and over with no bites. I eked out four, then decided to give CW a try. That was a little better, there was a break in propagation and I ran a little pileup to log 14 CW QSOs over the course of half an hour. It was so bad that I decided to not put the 10m dipole up and packed the gear to head home.

My operating position was along a stone wall at the crest of a ridge near the lake. I set up just off the path, which normally I don't do, preferring the solitude of deeper woods, but I was the only person in this area of the park and operated for an hour or so without seeing another person. I love this kind of setup, an open area along some interesting feature with plenty of things to explore. I lived not too far away from here, in Rindge NH, during my time at 73 Magazine and it was really nice to sit in a place that felt like home.

One thing I've discovered since starting my POTA journey is that there an astounding number of conservation areas and parks right around me. I've been to dozens of locations within a 45-minute drive that I'd never heard of, even though I hike a lot, and each has its own unique charm. I'm not saying that a place like Hodgman or Canoe River is necessarily charming, and to be honest I couldn't wait to get out of both of them, but even a scrub-filled pile of gravel has a story to tell if you spend the time to listen.

POTA is different than most outdoor recreation. When I'm hiking I am constantly on the move and the scenery is ever-changing. On a POTA activation I am sitting in one spot in the woods for a few hours, and you start to notice how life proceeds in these areas. Parks that I am at a lot, like Wrentham State Forest, are even more interesting because I'm going back to the same spot each time – mine's near the summit in the park – and I can make observations at different times of the year. POTA operators are a good source of some really valuable information around what's happening in our outdoor spaces.

As for Silver Lake, it was great to be back in an area that I had lived for many years. It is far enough away that I probably won't go back unless I happen to be in the area for something else, but it will stay high on my list of favorite spots.