Had an absolutely wonderful activation from a rented campsite at Lake Perris State Recreation Area. I was able to complete 40 QSOs across two UTC days, and confirmed how enjoyable it is to spend a minimal fee to have dedicated & reserved space. One of the QSOs was SSTV with FL, which is great, I'm hoping to do more SSTV QSOs during activations. Still no bites on RTTY or any other less-common modes.
The first activation before UTC midnight was entirely FT4 and I was delighted that I was able to complete it within less than 15 minutes. I've been working on learning CW for roves, but FT4 might be a reasonable alternative depending on the time of day. FT4 is never quite as busy as FT8, but doing smash & grab activations on FT8 is suprisingly hard to pull off; likely due to the volume of traffic in that mode.
Sunset was beautiful, and the whole setup & teardown was speedy and within spitting distance of my truck. My only negative note is that the site itself was somewhat filthy, and there were domestic ant-traps left by a previous tenant which was grossish. Not great nature vibes at the site compared to like, Stone Creek, but the view during golden hour made up for it.
73 de N6UWU