Activation Report: Sunshine Skyway Fishing Pier State Park (US-1916) — October 1, 2026

October 01 2026
8 min reading time

The Sunshine Skyway Bridge seen from the fishing pier in morning light, both cable-stayed pylons rising over the long approach span, the pier railing in the foreground and calm Tampa Bay water below.

Twenty-one 20m FT8 contacts from the Sunshine Skyway pier (US-1916), Seychelles fifth, Jersey and Wales in the log, and then the radio died mid-transmission. I thought I'd burned out the finals by running 100 watts on digital. It was a blown 15 amp fuse.

Mode: FT8 (Digital) · Band: 20m · Radio: Icom IC-706MKIIG · Contacts: 21 · Park: US-1916

Twenty-one contacts on 20m, the last one at 8:41 AM, and then the radio died in the middle of a transmission. I had to end the TikTok live and the activation. I figured I'd cooked the finals by running FT8 at 100 watts. It was a blown 15 amp fuse.

The park

Sunshine Skyway Fishing Pier State Park (US-1916), on the pier this time. The last write-up I did from here was September 18, five watts and 15 contacts. This morning was mainly clear, 73°F with a 3 mph breeze, and the bridge was right there.

The setup

The same car setup I used yesterday at Sawgrass Lake: the Icom IC-706MKIIG, the Harvest OUTB2000 HF/6M mobile antenna on the back of the car, an ATU-100 PRO+ on the console, and WSJT-X. The radio was at 100 watts, which I'll get to. The tuner read an SWR of 1.76. The one change from yesterday was a 30-foot ground radial I clipped to the antenna's ground and dropped straight down from the pier into Tampa Bay.

Black SUV parked on the pier roadway with a tall black mobile HF whip standing on its rear hatch and a thin wire running from the base down across the pavement, two pickup trucks parked ahead, light poles and a concrete railing along the pier under a clear blue sky.

Close-up of the mobile antenna's chrome base and knurled coupling clamped in a bracket on the edge of the SUV's rear hatch, a thin wire and a black coax cable running down the glass and body, with the pier railing and Tampa Bay behind in low morning light.

ATU-100 PRO+ tuner sitting beside the parking brake switch on the car's center console, its four-line display lit with power, SWR, antenna power and efficiency readouts, a green tune button and power switch beside it and a red charge light on with a USB cable plugged in.

On the air

First call was PD7RF in the Netherlands at 7:52. The fifth contact was S79KW in Seychelles at 8:00, and GJ6WRI in Jersey came two minutes after that. The tenth was MW3FLI in Wales at 8:12, which qualified the park. The rest was the lower 48, and the last contact in the log is K5GGC at 8:41.

WSJT-X on 20m FT8 at 14.074 MHz at 12:01 UTC in the middle of a contact with S79KW in Seychelles (LI75), the wide graph above it full of yellow signal traces, a call roster at upper right listing Jersey and Seychelles among the stations heard, and a GridTracker map at lower right with a dashed red line running from the Americas across the Atlantic and Africa to the Indian Ocean.

PSKReporter had me heard across Western Australia that morning. None of that turned into a contact in the log.

PSKReporter map of where W4GGJ was heard over the previous 15 minutes, lines fanning out from Florida to dense clusters across Europe and North America, a spread of pins across southern and western Australia, and single pins in Argentina, Indonesia and the western Indian Ocean.

What happened to the radio

It lost power while I was transmitting, and it wouldn't turn back on. There are four fuses on the power lines, one on the positive and one on the negative at the radio, and the same two at the battery. I looked at all four. No black marks, the filaments looked intact, and I didn't have a meter with me to test anything.

Then I remembered that earlier I'd been on SSB at 100 watts, and I never turned the radio down to 80 for digital. I figured FT8 at 100 watts was full duty cycle on the finals and I'd burned them out because I forgot to turn the power down. Radio's toast. So I took everything out of the car, all the wiring and the antennas.

Later it hit me that I had a multimeter at the shop. I grabbed it and tested the fuses, and the one on the positive side under the hood was dead. I went to Home Depot, bought a pack of fuses, replaced the one, and hooked the radio up to test it. It powered right up and worked fine.

So I pulled everything out of the car for no reason. I overthought the whole thing. Since it was all out anyway I rewired it, hid the wires properly, and the install is better than it was.

The fuse was a 15 amp, which isn't the right size for this setup. Power supplies for this are typically 25 to 30 amp. But that little fuse is the reason I still have a radio after I forgot to turn the power down, so I put a 15 amp back in.

The dead one is in a display case on my desk now.

A single blown glass-tube fuse with metal end caps lying on the black base inside a clear display case, a cream label plate below it reading Gave Its Life at 100 Watts, 15A US-1916 10/01/2026.

Would I activate here again?

Yes.

73 de W4GGJ

Activation Stats

Stat	Value
Park	Sunshine Skyway Fishing Pier State Park (US-1916)
Date	October 1, 2026
QSOs	21
Band / Mode	20m / FT8
Frequency	14.074 MHz
Power	100 W (carried over from SSB, meant to be 80 W)
Antenna	Harvest OUTB2000 HF/6M mobile, with a 30 ft ground radial dropped into Tampa Bay
Measured SWR	1.76 (ATU-100 PRO+)
Grid Squares Worked	17 (three contacts have no grid in the log)
Call Areas	US 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 + PD, GJ, S7, MW
First QSO	7:52 AM EDT (PD7RF, JO22)
Park Qualified	8:12 AM EDT (MW3FLI, IO83, 10th contact)
Last QSO	8:41 AM EDT (K5GGC, EM13)
Session Length	49 minutes (first to last QSO)
Hottest 15 Minutes	8 QSOs (7:52–8:07 AM EDT)
Furthest Contact	S79KW, LI75 (Seychelles), 9,251 mi / 14,888 km
DXCC Entities	5 (USA, Netherlands, Jersey, Seychelles, Wales)
Best Report Received	+16 (K0EG, EM48 and K5GGC, EM13)
Conditions	SFI 136, K-index 1
Weather	Mainly clear, 73°F, calm, 3 mph

All-Time POTA Stats

Stat	Value
Activations	38
Unique Parks	17
Activation QSOs	917
Parks Hunted	431
POTA Awards	17

Gear used in this activation: Icom IC-706MKIIG · Harvest OUTB2000 HF/6M · ATU-100 PRO+ · laptop running WSJT-X

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Activation Report: Sunshine Skyway Fishing Pier State Park (US-1916) — October 1, 2026

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