It was a somewhat gloomy day though not quite. Actually, it was pretty nice when we set out, my long-suffering wyfe and I. The goal was to activate K-1376, Little Buffalo State Park, about 19 kilometers away in New Bloomfield PA. The parking area near the swimming pool is gated off for the season which had no effect on me as I had no plans on going to that end of the park anyway. We went to the boat launch area. It overlooks the Eastern end of the lake and is usually less crowded with foot traffic. Today there were a few dog walkers and one fellow who put his boat into the water and went fishing but that was all. A side note about the fisherman, He had something in his truck that was causing a broad band humming on my radio, not enough to interfere but it was noticeable. It stopped when he shut the truck off. Anyway, I was set up in about 15 minutes and go on the air. I used my Buddistick this time and had good results. Ever since I stopped trying to tune using the counterpoise and started using a 6 meter by 10 centimeter strip of copper mesh as a ground plane, tuning it with my tuner is a breeze. I started operating on 7.188 MHz and made several contacts and then had to move due to a net coming in on top of me. I moved to 7.278 MHz and was able to finish out my operation. I stayed as long as I could but the cold did get the best of me. The temperature was around 7C but the wind was blowing from off the lake a constant 11 Kph and gusting to 28 Kph which took the core temperature right out of me, in spite of the copious amounts of coffee and the nice blanket I was sitting on. I made 46 contacts and had Zarathustra with me to keep watch for lake monsters. Namaste for now, kidlets.