Activation Report: Moody Branch Wildlife and Environmental Area (US-6317) — August 17, 2026

• August 17 2026
• 13 min reading time

Twenty-two contacts across 20, 17, and 15 meters at Moody Branch Wildlife and Environmental Area (US-6317) — 5 watts QRP into a Radioddity HF-010 on a ground spike, Barbados on the first call of the morning, and the ten minutes with a NanoVNA that turned a dead-looking 15 meters into France and Brazil.

Mode: FT8 (Digital) · Bands: 20m / 17m / 15m · Radio: Xiegu X6200 · Contacts: 22 · Park: US-6317

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Twenty-two contacts, three bands, three continents, five watts — and the whole day turned on a decision I nearly didn't make. When 17 meters went quiet I almost blamed the band. Instead I put the NanoVNA on the antenna and found out the tuner had been doing my job for me.

The park

Moody Branch Wildlife and Environmental Area (US-6317) is 960 acres of Florida scrub in northern Manatee County, about twenty miles northeast of Parrish. Manatee County bought it in 2004 under Florida Forever and the FWC manages it, largely for gopher tortoise and Florida scrub-jay habitat. There's one entrance, a parking area, no daily-use permit, and no restrooms or water. It opens a half hour before sunrise, which is the detail that matters if you like starting early.

The signage says vehicles aren't permitted, which means no driving the trails — the entrance lot itself is inside the boundary, so operating from it is a legitimate activation. I checked that before I drove out, because a pin on a map is a point, not a polygon, and I'd already talked myself out of a different park that morning for exactly that reason.

Past the lot there's a roofed pavilion with two long picnic tables on a gravel pad. Shade, a flat surface, and open sky in every direction. For a portable vertical that's close to ideal.

The setup

Radioddity HF-010 on a ground spike about twenty-five feet out from the pavilion, in low mown grass with a clear horizon. Sandy scrub soil takes a spike well, and there's no water source out here to fill the tripod ballast bag, so the spike was the only sensible choice. Three radials laid out flat.

Xiegu X6200 at 5 watts on the table, DigiPi on a Raspberry Pi 4 running WSJT-X, tablet over VNC, and a LiFePO4 pack. Internet off a cell hotspot.

No Starlink and no engine running. Both of those are noise sources I've measured before — together they cost me roughly 6 dB on 20 meters at a previous activation — and leaving them off meant giving up air conditioning. Worth it, as the first contact of the day would demonstrate.

One change worth writing down

The HF-010's coax comes on a spool with five turns zip-tied to it, acting as a common-mode choke. I've always run the spool at the radio end. Today I put it at the antenna instead.

That's the correct end and it isn't a small difference. Common-mode current gets excited at the feedpoint, where the antenna's field is strongest and the coax shield is a convenient extension of the radiating system. Choke it there and you stop it at the source. Choke it at the radio and every foot of shield between the antenna and the spool is still carrying current — still radiating on transmit, still hauling noise back down the line on receive.

On a ground-mounted vertical with only three radials that matters more than it would on a full ground system. Three radials is an imperfect counterpoise, and the shield will happily volunteer to be radial number four if you let it. Choking at the feedpoint forces the radials to do their job.

20 meters

NanoVNA on the antenna first. 1.315 SWR at 14.070, 38.18 ohms resistive, reactance essentially zero. That's a resonant antenna, not a tuner-flattened one, and the full 3 to 30 MHz sweep shows the resonances sitting where they should.

First call of the day was 8P6DMD in Barbados at 12:25 UTC — 1,787 miles, grid GK03, minus 15 sent and minus 17 back. Five watts, first cycle, into a vertical stuck in the dirt. That contact is the whole argument for leaving the engine off.

Twenty meters ran hot for half an hour: WF7B, KC8YOM, KE4PLU, W9TNC, K5LJC, NS9I, AA4QE, AC3LX, and KE8UOH closed it out at 12:54. Ten contacts in twenty-nine minutes, and the park was qualified before nine in the morning. Best fifteen-minute stretch of the day was seven QSOs starting at 12:33 — a 28-an-hour pace.

17 meters, and the mistake

Twenty slowed down, so I moved to 18.101. Here's the part I'd do differently: I didn't touch the coil. I just let the radio's internal ATU find a match and started calling.

It worked, in the sense that contacts happened. W6GRE, N0BFQ, NA6JD, VE3XN up in Ontario, HK4R down in Colombia, NA2NY, WJ8Y, W9AV, NF0N. Nine QSOs and a second DX entity.

But an ATU doesn't make an antenna resonant. It presents 50 ohms to the radio at the tuner and absorbs the mismatch behind it. With the whip still set for 20 meters, I was feeding a reactive load through thirty-odd feet of RG58 and heating the tuner and the coax with power that should have been leaving the antenna. At 100 watts you'd never notice. At five watts there is no margin to give away.

When the rate flattened out I assumed the band had closed. It hadn't — I was still decoding Europe. The signal was leaving; there just wasn't enough of it.

15 meters, done properly

So I stopped guessing and put the NanoVNA back on the antenna. Slid the coil, collapsed two whip sections, swept it again: 1.269 at 18.12. Then moved to 15, adjusted the coil again, dropped two more sections, and got 1.18 at 21.074 — the best match of the day. ATU off from that point on.

Fifteen was long. PSK Reporter had me landing in Finland — about 4,700 miles, which works out near 940 miles per watt. Then F1TXI in France came back at 14:02, grid IN96, 4,460 miles: the furthest contact of the day. Six minutes later PY5GA in Brazil, a park-to-park, at minus 12. In the band activity pane I could watch him working IK2XDF in Italy on the same frequency — the band open in two directions at once.

K0LB in FM18 at 14:14 was the last one in the log. Three contacts on 15 meters, and two of them crossed an ocean.

The lesson worth keeping

A tuner will get you on the air on any band you point it at, and that convenience is exactly the trap. It hides the thing you most need to know, which is whether the antenna is actually resonant where you're transmitting. Ten minutes with a VNA and a coil slider bought me France and Brazil on a band I'd nearly written off.

Sweep the antenna on every band change. Let the ATU do a final trim, not the whole job. And put the choke at the feedpoint, not at the radio.

Three coil settings came home with me — 20, 17, and 15 meters, each with its whip section count and measured SWR. That's the real haul from this activation. Next time it's a two-minute band change instead of a fifteen-minute one.

Would I activate here again?

Yes, without hesitation, and it goes near the top of the list. A roofed pavilion with real tables, a gravel pad, open sky in every direction, and a genuinely quiet noise floor — Barbados on the first call at five watts is the receipt. The half-hour-before-sunrise opening makes it a good early site, which matters in August when the pavilion turns into an oven by ten.

Two things to know. There's no water and no restroom, so bring what you need. And this is managed scrub-jay and gopher tortoise habitat — keep gear on the gravel and the mown grass, watch for burrows, and don't guy anything into the scrub.

73 de W4GGJ

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Activation Stats

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All-Time POTA Stats

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Gear used in this activation: Xiegu X6200 · Radioddity HF-010 · NanoVNA · LiFePO4 Battery · DigiPi on RPi 4

Tags

15 meters 15m 17 meters 17m 20 meters 20m 8P6DMD amateur radio antenna tuning ATU Barbados Brazil coil adjustment common-mode choke DigiPi Digital DX F1TXI field operations Florida FT8 ham radio HK4R Manatee County Moody Branch Wildlife and Environmental Area NanoVNA park-to-park Parks on the Air portable HF POTA PY5GA QRP Radioddity HF-010 TavaOne Activate US-6317 W4GGJ WSJT-X Xiegu X6200

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