The Quest for the Kilo: Two Guys a Radio and a Thousand Contacts

Have you done it , cried it , or is this just too many contacts for one park ? We are in the middle of doing one and tonight you will hear our thoughts and experience so far . Hello and welcome to the Free and Ham Podcast . Our bar weekly show explores ham radio topics in New Hampshire , new England and beyond .

Whether you are a regular listener or a first time guest , we are excited to have you here and appreciate your support . Thank you for tuning into this week's episode . Let's get into today's show . I'm your host , todd , all signed W1SDJ , and my co-host , eric N1JOR . Joins me Brian , w1snh . Our other co-host is unfortunately flying again , but he'll be back soon .

Before the show discussion , we always like to catch up and let our listeners know what's been going on and where the Live Free and Ham crew will be . In three months . We will host our live stream on our YouTube channel .

We'll update our socials and website and live shows various monthly but if you subscribe to our channel you'll get notified where we are live . Alright , eric , what's been going on with you today ? I'm Ham Radio Lely since our last episode . Yeah , unfortunately , I want to come down and check that out with you , but I had to work .

So I caught Tim AC1QDK on the ride to work and I was like what is he doing up ? He's normally in bed by like 7 o'clock , 7.30 . So he was giving me all the details . So that's good . Myself I've been messing up my shack . I've been getting some new equipment for the podcast , trying to fix up my computer and get things squared away .

So right now my shack is a disaster , but I'm hoping to have it all done within a week or two at least . Not completely done , but at least done to where I feel comfortable being in it . It's not such a mess . Yeah , and you're talking about working 10 meters and stuff .

Unfortunately , my streak of Australia on 20 meters in the middle of the night has just died . It's not there anymore . No one's on 20 meters in the middle of the night , so the radio has been pretty boring . Closer to the early morning I see Japan and stuff pop up on Polo , but I can't hear them and most of them are on 20 or 40 meters .

So it's not really . But I had fun when I was working New Zealand and those guys all night long . So that was a good experience . But I'm hoping it comes back soon because I am getting bored at work . Yeah , but in the middle of the night 40 is like 80 . Just a bunch of guys talking a bunch of junk and they're just like angry .

Maybe I should just get on the air and say hey guys , 80 meters is wide open . Yeah , maybe , yeah , maybe I'll . Maybe I'll play that game next time , next time I work . I think I'm working Tuesday night , so we'll try that . Anyway . So tonight we're going to talk about you and I working on our kilo at the National Rail Trail Park .

We've been , we were on a roll , we were kind of going back and forth . I think we're all both around like 500 . So we're like halfway there . But I haven't been there in months . I didn't go all summer I think the last time I was in there , like early spring maybe , and it's it's , it's close . Yeah , it was a while ago .

So just to kind of go over kind of what . How this happened with us is this is a park that is close to my work . It's located in Nashville , new Hampshire .

It also goes down into mass , but we were activated in Nashville right at the beginning of the rail trail and there's a nice little pond and you can pull right up to the pond and basically I activate out of my Jeep . Sometimes we bring a table , sometimes I just activate out of the Jeep and set the chair out and easy park to get contacts .

I've worked Alaska all the way from there in the middle of the day , 20 meters . It's just a good park and it's easy and it's close and I can do it on my lunch break .

The problem is is when I was doing it before and I was cranking in these contacts , I didn't have a lot to do with that work and I haven't had lunch in a while , so that's why I haven't been activating the park as much .

But as I was talking to Eric about doing this park and Eric was doing the park too , it was one that we've done together in the past . We noticed that we were kind of neck and neck with how many contacts we made . So we agreed to let's work this park together , separately and together , to get a thousand contacts . So , yeah , go ahead , you . Yeah .

Well , yeah , I'm not going to be sitting outside in the cold , no , when it's snowing up , maybe I could do it in the Jeep and I could do that . That's not a big deal . So I mean , I figure I'm going to do it . If it's a nice day out and I get a lunch break , I might go and try to activate . You know , get 10 , 20 contacts nothing too fancy .

But one of the things that the reason we're doing this podcast and talking about this is when Eric and I were talking about it we kept going back and forth on who had the most contacts , whatever . We agreed as friends that when we get to close to the kilo , that we're going to go and activate it together and get the kilo at the same time .

Yeah , yeah , we'll live stream and we'll try to get to the same numbers , you know . And then we'll start and do two operators and try to get that done . So it's been , it's been kind of fun .

I normally call them and I tell them I operated the rail trail and I got 30 contacts and then he'll tell me yeah , I was there , I'm going out there this afternoon and he'll tell me you got like 30 or 40 contacts . So you know we're trying to keep it close . But it's been fun and it's an easy . It's probably just a really convenient park , I think .

And I think that's one of the things we have to do when you're thinking about doing a kilo on a park , when it has to be kind of easily accessible and it needs to be kind of close to where you're normally at , because you don't want to be driving an hour to go do 20 or 30 contacts and then come back .

I'm , you've been working on that since I've known you no-transcript , and it goes from Nashua and it goes all the way , went down into Mass . I don't even know how far it goes . It goes a while , I think . Yeah , I think I biked at one time when the kids were little . I think I did half of it and then I had to come back .

So I did half of it and back , so that's kind of like the full thing , yeah . Yeah , it's , it's flat . People rollerblade , they walk the dogs , they ride their bikes , you know walking people .

So it's it's a nice little and at the beginning of it there's a little pond and a little information thing and you know a lot of people meet up there as a small parking lot . But what's kind of cool about it is kind of like right outside a neighborhood , like to get to it .

You drive through this neighborhood and then all of a sudden it's there and there's some trails in the back or anything . I've brought my son and his friend I wanted to activate and I think you were with me and they went fishing . Were you with me that time ? Yeah . Yeah , I was . So they , they go out and they go fishing .

We play radio and you know I can see what they're doing . Make sure they're not jumping in the pond or whatever . So but yeah , so it's , it's , it's a , it's a cool park and it's it's literally five minutes from my work .

So when I get an hour I can , I can get down and I can get it and get up , set up , get my 20 contacts in 10 con , whatever it's going to be , and get out , wreck that and back at work , you know , within an hour . So that's basically how I've been doing it . But yeah , what is ? What is it ? It's Kilo 8396 .

It's called the Nashua River Rail Trail State Trail and the marker on the map shows it in Massachusetts , but where we're activating it is just on the border of . Massachusetts in Nashua , no-transcript . Like sometimes I'm there and I'm the only one there .

Other times it's people coming and going and one time I was trying to activate and there was like motorcycles driving by like every two , and if you're not from New Hampshire , new Hampshire is pretty like live free or die A lot of . We have bike weekend in June .

You don't have to wear a helmet and I don't think the police really care about the pipes up here , even though there are some rules . But like everyone just has like straight , not even out there . There is no , it's not a muffler , it's just a steel pipe or chrome pipe and they're super loud .

So you're trying to work a contact and all of a sudden this guy comes flying down a road and you can hear his thing is a motorcycle going . It's people like what was that ? I'm like , oh , it's just the motorcycle . Oh , relax , relax , all right . So you're looking , so it's marked down in the middle of the road and you're grunting between pep and grunt .

You , I've been there when the DPW was I don't know if they were cleaning or what and they had their big trucks right in the way I was supposed to park . I'm like what ? Like where am I going to park ? You ? right we need to . We need to retire , eric . That's when we can get the kilo . We just need to have no other responsibilities . Well , I can .

I think you know . Just before we go into that , I just want to . I think this was the second park I activated with you . The first one we did is when I first got my general . We did a park down in , down in mass , that we do one or two . I think we might have done two . I think we did two on the way home , maybe not .

Yeah , we just did one , yeah , okay , so we did that one and then this one . The second one we did we met up with Paul KF for T , p , y and Paul and I showed up to the parking and he's like you know what to do , and I'm like , nope , I'm just going to wait for Eric .

And then Eric showed up and we got all set up and I think we used your radio , because I don't even think I had a 891 yet . I did yeah , I can't , yeah , yeah , yeah , right , alright , so I had it , but I didn't . I don't know . We were going to use your radio and the three of us did it and it was actually .

There's a picture on my website with the three of us , like I don't know how we got when , either we took a selfie or we took a picture . I don't know how we did it . There's a good picture of the three of us , you know , doing the activation . It was a I think it was a fall day and it was a .

It was a good time and that that's kind of was the start of it . And then I started going back more and more and I really enjoyed , you know , doing it and I like doing it alone . I like doing it with you know , friends and stuff . So , but how are we going to get it done ? Get it done and how is that going to work ?

You know , well , I gotta get back to activating it . I'm really I mean so when I switched offices . So when I went back down , I was working in Manchester , new Hampshire , which is north of national , and then I switched down to the national office and I didn't have much to do , so I had all this free time .

So I would say I'm going to take my lunch and go down and we would go do the , I go do the real trip gets more context now it's like I don't even have time to eat lunch , like if I eat lunch it's like a miracle . I have to tell you like , oh , I just miss lunch , I just have dinner . Why not ?

So when I have the the break of the time , you know that's when I I'm going to try to do it . I always bring my gear with me . It's always in my Jeep and I'm all ready to go . I just don't have . You know , I , even when I plan , said , oh , I don't much going on today . Something always happens .

You know , I got emergency court hearing or or whatever . So that's kind of my my thing is I got to get back out there and just start doing it . Well . So so you're gonna , you're gonna ask me to get up at three . I mean I get no sleep anyway . So the few hours that I get I can't afford to . To get up early to activate a park .

I mean I would love to do that , but that would be kind of tough . You know , go ahead , you want to get this done before the end of the year . Is that your goal ? Yeah , yeah . And for like an hour Now . I'm , I'm , I'm , I'm . This week is not going to be good for me because I have to go to . Well , I have to go to .

I'm going to Mississippi on Thursday and Friday . I got to work Tuesday overnight . I got to go . I got to be up in Laconia tomorrow at seven am . Like when am I going to do this ? I got to get my car . I got to get my car inspected . I got to get the tire on the Jeep put in and I got to get an oil change and an inspection all before Friday .

And let's not forget that we don't have , we don't have sun . The sun doesn't come up till seven , 30 , and it gets dark at four , 30 . So we've only done it's , we've only done it's 17 . You know , I do have , I do have a lot of vacation time .

So I could just , if there's a nice day , like when we did the , the robe , right , if there's a nice day , if it's going to get up in the fifties or sixties and sunny and not windy , I might just take a day off and just park my ass there and see how many I could get . You know , I think the , I think if you and I did it together .

I think what I think the strategy would be set up one antenna , 10 meters , work 10 meters till it's dead and jump to 20 work 20 meters till we don't get here anyone anymore . And then , while we're setting up , you would have two antennas right 10 meter .

You'll set up the 20 meter one that we could easily switch and then , while we're in the middle , if we get a low , set it the other one back up to 40 meters . And I think we would be good , because I always find like I work all the time . I work all the stations and there's no more hunters anymore .

So if I do a long one , it's like they just they're not there . They're there , but I've already worked them all . Right yeah . Yeah , yeah , yeah . Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah yeah . Yeah , yeah , yeah , oh , I think we got to . I think we got to get to like maybe 50 . Because if we're going to do a left , we're going to do .

I mean , I'm going to . If we're going to do the break , the kilo , we're not going to be there for an hour and run it , we're going to have to do it on a time we can have time to be there . So like 950 , we come back .

That's when we get together and try not , and maybe maybe what we got to do is just say we're going to go up to 950 and stop , even if you're in a pile up , because you know how it gets right .

You get in a pile up and you sit there and I won't be paid , I won't be paid , I won't be paying attention , I'm going to be like oh , I got the thousand contacts . Eric's going to kill me . Yeah , you got to go , guys , yeah . Yeah . Yeah , and then you know we barely activate in the park . We'll be there for like three hours to get 10 .

That would be the worst Be there forever . An hour live stream . Yeah . Yeah , I'm going to say that when's the first day of spring . So , whatever , the first day of spring is April . May , we'll say May . We'll say May 1st . Let's just say May 1st . Make it simple .

I think I'm going to say that I'm going to say by May 1st we'll be at the 950 mark , because I'm going to push myself to at least try to do some activations there .

I'm like a little bit of free time out of having you know , in the winter things do quiet down for me a little bit , you know , and if it's crappy day out and I can sit my Jeep and do it , no big deal . And you got the and you got the . Yeah , yeah , yeah , I've done a lot of 20 . I've been , I really like doing 10 meters .

Well , 10 meters is my favorite quota ban Ever since we did that park by that dam and I tried 10 meters , that's . I always start off with 10 . And yeah , so I mean I'm always going to start with 10 and see how it goes . But yeah , 20 meters is the one I've done the most in . I don't even know if I've done 10 at this park .

Yeah , what if you don't activate the park ? Do you still get credits for , like , you made , the contacts in that park ? If you have 500 contacts and you go to a park and you make 9 , and you don't activate it , you get 509 for that park or does it not count ? You get the contacts but not the .

I've been pretty stubborn I don't leave until I activate the park . I sat in a park in Enedicat , I don't know , in Rhode Island . I sat in a park in Rhode Island . It was basically at the end of this neighborhood , where I was at the trailhead of this dense wooded forest and it took me 2 and a half hours to get 10 contacts and I just wasn't leaving .

I'm like I'm not leaving , I don't care , someone's going to answer me . I'm not leaving . I'm not leaving . Right Added to right , right , right , and you know it's a good park because there's really not a lot of noise , even though you're close to the neighborhoods and stuff .

I haven't had any problem with like a lot of noise or anything and I've had good signals . Like I said that one time I got that guy from Alaska I need Alaska to work all states and I was like you know the park , are you ? This isn't a park , the park he goes .

No , he was in North I think it's called North Pole Alaska , it's like in the middle of the state and it's like this little . I'm like . I looked them up I was like , oh my God , I'm like what do you do up there besides activate or do do do ham radio , because there's really nothing out there .

But yeah , so it's a good , it's a good park and you know I'm looking forward to it . I think it's going to be fun when we , when we finally get it , we'll have to definitely celebrate because you know and go , go ahead . Yeah . And we'll update you as we get , as we act , as we start activating it more and more and let everyone know .

I mean it really depends on what the weather is going to be like this winter . I mean , if we're getting blizzard upon blizzard , you know it might be more difficult , but we have a mild winter . Yeah , I can see myself . Oh yeah , we wouldn't have anything going on before that . Like well , we don't have to prepare for field day or anything .

Yeah , yeah , that doesn't sound so good . I see some of these other YouTubers and they got kilos upon kilos upon kilos and I'm like how do you do that ? Yeah , like K-Murder , how does he do it ? He's got like Huntsville State Park . He's got like 5,000 contacts . Hey , oh , he does live close to it , back close . That's not a good part , though .

That's like on the side of the road it's always buggy . Yeah . I did it . Yeah , so , yeah , so you know . So let's , let's do that , let's see what . We'll keep people updated on how we're doing and we'll we'll get this thing done and then we'll have to take another part to do . We kind of just keep on your kid , just stop .

I wonder , I wonder how many , I wonder how many people do POTA and how many people actually have the kilo award . So when you get it , when you get it as you do another kilo , do they just add that to the award , like the park number . So they're just . Yeah , I bet you .

I bet you , if we do , if we do it live , I bet you we'll get a lot of the club members to show up Just on parks , on the air . It's activating . He's a thousand kilos , like he's done the kilo award a thousand times . All right , we need to get him on . We need to get him on the show . I want to talk to this guy . He like win the lottery .

And I told him that's like come on . All right , del , you need to contact us if you're watching this , this podcast , or watching this on YouTube , because we need to get you on here . I want to pick your brain . That's incredible . Wow . I only have I don't even have 8000 total use of contacts . I know .

Yeah Well , I'm , you know I'm working on , you know my state . So , like I said , I'm going next week or this Thursday . I'm heading down to Mississippi I got to go see this kid and I'm going to cruise over to Louisiana .

I got a park picked out and then , if it's not too far , I'm going to drive north to Arkansas , pick a park there and then hopefully get back to Mississippi and try to get three done . Definitely I want to get those two , because I don't have Louisiana and Arkansas and I don't think I'm ever going to be going down there ever again .

So if I don't get them , well , don't say never , because I might just be able to take a long vacation to a road trip . I'd like to do that . I think that would be fun . You and I take like a week , what ?

Oh no , but if , just working our way south and pick it off states , just boom , boom , like get one of those campers and just go , yeah , west Virginia , west Virginia , kind of do that . New Jersey , yeah , yeah , I drive . Every night I go to work , I drive by , and every night I come home I drive by the Powerball and the what's the other one ?

Mega Millions , and they're both around like 300 and something million , yeah , I mean , yeah , once it gets close to the billion , then more and more people buy into it and then it grows faster . But it takes a long time , like it's been like this for weeks .

Once it gets , once it gets to five , normally , once it gets to 500 million , then people start playing and it gets close to the billion . But yeah , yeah , 300 million , that would be easy . We could hire a driver to even drive us . Yeah , yeah . Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , let's wrap this up .

So , if you guys are interested , if you want to leave us some comments or whatever , if you've done Kilos , what you thought about this podcast , what do you think about us trying to do it together ? Is it a cool idea ? A dumb idea , really ?

It's just , it wasn't anything that we set out to do in the beginning , but as we were working this park and making these contacts , we decided that it's a good kind of plan for us and it's just something we put on our bucket list .

So we're not going to quit till it's done , and yeah , so let us know what you think , leave us some comments and send us an email , and we'd love to get back to you and let you know what we thought . And what was that guy's name ? Dall Dallin . Marilyn , please contact us because I want you on this show . I want to .

I might even email you and say you need to come on our podcast . I want to know about your , your , your the pota master . Yeah , all right . Well , uh , well , listen , thank you guys for coming on today . Uh , listening to us and uh , joining the show .

Uh , you can reach us at livefreeandhandcom and uh , please hit like um and uh subscribe to our podcast and uh you'll be able to get our alerts and uh . Again , thank you for uh listening and uh have a great , great day or evening whenever you're watching this . Uh , eric , you have anything to say ? All right , um , 73 guys , we'll talk to you soon .