Activation Report: De Soto National Memorial (US-0772) — June 12, 2026

• June 12 2026
• 6 min reading time

Mode: FT8 (Digital) · Band: 20m · Radio: Xiegu X6200 · Contacts: 25 · Park: US-0772

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Twenty-five QSOs on five watts, fifteen grid squares, a thousand-mile best contact — and for the first time ever, my activation log built itself in real time while I operated. This was the first live field test of TavaOne // Activate, and it happened at one of my favorite waterfront parks on Tampa Bay.

The park

De Soto National Memorial sits at the mouth of the Manatee River in Bradenton, marking the spot where Hernando de Soto's expedition came ashore in 1539. It's a small park, but the operating real estate is hard to beat — picnic tables right on the water, shaded by sea grape trees, with a clear look north across the bay. By the time I had the table set, boats were already working the channel and a few kayakers were paddling the shoreline. Clear skies, 81 degrees, almost no wind. You don't get many better mornings in Florida in June.

The setup

Standard field stack: the Xiegu X6200 running 5 watts into the Radioddity HF-010 vertical, with the Android tablet handling WSJT-X duties. A quick sweep with the NanoVNA showed the HF-010 settled in nicely on 20m with a clean, deep dip right where the FT8 traffic lives. No tuner drama, no fiddling — clip it together, check it, get on the air.

The new piece was the software. This was the very first field test of activate.tavaone.com, and I'm just going to say it: this thing is so freaking cool. Every WSJT-X contact streamed straight into my activation log the moment it completed — no exporting an ADIF later, no second logging app to babysit — and the info bar tracked my contact count and how many more I needed to qualify the park, live, in real time, while I sat back and watched the water.

On the air

First contact came at 8:15 AM local. The start was slow — a contact here, a contact there — but 20m stayed steady and my activation tracker kept climbing toward qualification on its own. By 8:53 the park was qualified, and I kept running for another hour and a half just because the morning was too good to pack up.

Final tally: 25 QSOs on 20m FT8, all at QRP power. Contacts landed across 15 grid squares, with the best DX of the morning going to AD9DU in northern Illinois — right around 1,095 miles on five watts and a vertical sitting at a picnic table. The reach this little antenna gets continues to impress me.

Would I activate here again?

YES. De Soto is a repeat customer for a reason — easy access, shaded waterfront tables, and a view that makes slow band conditions feel like a bonus instead of a problem.

73 de W4GGJ

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Activation Stats

All-Time POTA Stats

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Gear used in this activation: Xiegu X6200 · Radioddity HF-010 · NanoVNA · 50L MOLLE Backpack · LiFePO4 Batteries

Tags

20 meters Bradenton De Soto National Memorial Digital Florida FT8 Parks on the Air portable HF POTA QRP Radioddity HF-010 Tampa Bay TavaOne Activate US-0772 WSJT-X Xiegu X6200

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