Craigflower Manor Historical Site

Last year, I operated from the newly listed Craigflower Schoolhouse Park, an historic building dating back to 1855. Across the Gorge Waterway sits the manor—also built in the 1850s—and back then, I had already resolved to activate the manor at a future date. That date finally arrived. The forecast promised a wet day, but the morning brought parting clouds and a welcome appearance of the sun. The bands were in good shape, so I decided it was worth the risk to head out and see if I could successfully activate the park.

I left my room around 11:30 AM, with the navcom estimating an 18-minute drive. Making good time through the traffic, I arrived to find a mostly empty parking lot, though an active renovation crew was busy repairing the stone wall with a generator running. That caused some concern, as generators can be notoriously RF-noisy. The north side of the lot butts up against the open grass surrounding the manor house. The ground rises sharply—about 2.5 meters above the parking level—and I parked right against that slope. I then grabbed my camera and set out to survey the grounds.

The manor offers tours on a pre-arranged schedule, and fortunately, there were no tour groups there today. Once I finished reviewing the area, I decided my best setup would be to operate out of the car once again, with the antenna spread out just above on the higher grassy knoll. I soon had the mast in the air and the radio engaged.

I noticed that virtually all activity was concentrated on the 20m band, yet my propagation reports indicated that 15m should be good. I listened across a section of the 20m band, but the background noise was loud—likely interference from the nearby generator—so I simply moved to the much quieter 15m band and started calling on a frequency.

Very quickly, I received a response from a station in California reporting a strong, clear signal from me. Soon after came Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and New York. The contacts kept rolling in at a much faster rate than my session previously at Hatley Park. By the 30-minute mark, I had logged 31 contacts—a truly fantastic run!

Toward the end, I received a text from club member Jim, and just like last time, we moved over to 40m for a nice visit. With 32 total log entries in the book, I felt I had accomplished enough for the day and packed up my gear. It was a pleasant day out at the park, and the operating went by very quickly, complete with several small pile-ups. I really don’t understand why I was the only POTA activator using the band; I certainly prefer 15m over 20m.

With the radio packed away, I reversed course on the navcom, which guided me back along my earlier route—though the drive home ended up being a couple of minutes slower.