Activation Details
| UTC Day | July 19, 2025 |
| Park Designator | US-7859 |
| Bands | 20m |
| Modes | CW, FT8 |
| Contacts | 2 CW, 23 FT8 |
| Radio | Icom IC-705 & AH-705 Tuner |
| Antenna | 9:1 EFRW with a 29' vertical |
| Power | 10 Watts |
Here’s the second field report of our July 2025 Maine vacation! We like seeing multiple places when we go on vacations and we split our trip to Maine by staying in Portland for the first half and Boothbay Harbor for the second.
The day after our visit to Two Lights State Park, we made the trek up to Boothbay Harbor and stopped at Fort Edgecomb State Historic Site along the way.
Fort Edgecomb is only a few acres with an incredible view over Sheepscot River. It was originally built to protect neighboring Wiscasset against the British and then later re-activated during the civil war.
We learned a little bit of history and checked out the fort itself.
The fort was designed for cannon fire out of the top floor with carronade cannons which were smoothbore cannons designed to smack targets broadside.
If you weren’t on cannon duty, you’d be lining up against a gunsight and firing out with a musket.
We set up down by the river and I got to work. I set up my Icom IC-705 and the same 9:1 EFRW with a 29’ vertical I used at Two Lights. The POTA33 mast was easy to just lay against a tree and I tossed my radial wire down in the direction of the river.
It was slow going on CW for the first 25 minutes. I started out on 5 watts QRP without much luck and plugged in a 3Ah lifepo battery to get the full 10 watts out of my 705. Thanks to Steve K9IS and Doc W4SV for getting me. While my wife is extremely patient while I do radio on vacation, I do like getting to ten contacts as quick as I can so I know we can leave at any time.
While I prefer to do exclusively CW activations nowadays, I was glad I threw in a USB cable so I could do some FT8. I switched over to the laptop and watched the contacts roll in.
I don’t do many digital mode POTA activations and while I know FT8 is always busy, it was surprising to see just how many stations immediately called me back. I know FT8 and other digital modes are increasingly popular bit did make me wonder a bit about CW fading away.
The highlight was getting one DX contact on FT8 — Ian G4IIY from the UK came in strong on 20 meters.
All in, 25 contacts in the logs and we were off to Boothbay Harbor.