Wolf Lake, Missiles, and a Wire on 40

Activated William W. Powers State Recreation Area (US-4107) on 40m CW. 21 QSOs. My son fished from a canoe with a trolling motor. The dog supervised. W9JOM was a handful of miles away and absolutely hammering me. A Cold War missile base and a picnic table on a lake — not bad for a Saturday in Illinois.

I Don't Like Illinois

Let me get that out of the way. Driving into Illinois always feels like a toll and a prayer that nothing goes wrong — because if something goes wrong it's going to be in Illinois. But to its credit, the southeast corner of Chicago around Wolf Lake is genuinely nice. Hegewisch doesn't feel like Chicago. It feels like a little lake town that got absorbed by the city and decided not to change. Wide sky, water, birds, and enough trees to throw a wire over.

William W. Powers State Recreation Area sits on 600 acres centered around Wolf Lake — 419 of those acres are the lake itself, straddling the Illinois/Indiana state line. Good fishing. Good wildlife. And, as it turns out, a decent place to run 100 watts into a wire.

The History Under Our Feet

Before it was a park, this land was a Cold War missile base.

Nike missile site C-44 was part of the Chicago-Gary Defense Area, which included about 20 bases ringing the Chicagoland area. Other sites were at Fort Sheridan, Porter, Indiana, even in the middle of Jackson Park. C-44 defended the south side of Chicago with Nike Ajax surface-to-air missiles from 1958 until it was deactivated in 1963. The buildings were later demolished. Some of the foundations remain if you know where to walk.

What's left above ground is a decommissioned Nike Ajax missile on a concrete pad — a monument, pointed at a sky it was never fired into, sitting between picnic tables and a boat launch. The concrete pads from the old fire control and launch areas are still back there in the overgrowth if you follow Wolf Lake Drive to where the road forks.

The monument at Powers. Nike Ajax, C-44, Hegewisch/Wolf Lake — operational 1955, deactivated 1963.

I work at Blast Camp in Hobart — that's Nike site C-47 — and C-47 is a completely different story. The buildings are still standing. You can walk through them. The history is immediate in a way that concrete pads aren't. Powers is quieter about what it used to be. The missile on the monument is the loudest thing left.

Standing next to a picnic table with a radio, looking at an old missile, listening to your kid cast from a canoe. The missiles were there to protect cities full of people doing ordinary things. The ordinary things are still happening. The missiles are monuments now.

The Setup

Radio	Yaesu FT-991A, internal ATU, 100W
Antenna	W9PRK's 9:1 unun — random wire over a tree, tuned right up on 40
Power	100Ah LiFePO4
Mode	CW  |  7.055 MHz
Logger	Ham2K Portable Logger

The 9:1 unun and a wire over a tree is one of those setups that shouldn't work as well as it does. The internal ATU on the 991A found a match without complaining and we were off. 40 meters on a gray overcast Saturday afternoon — the band was in good shape.

W9JOM, the Hammer

W9JOM was only a few miles away. Close enough that his signal was genuinely loud — full S9, meter pinned. When he hit the key, you knew it.

His callsign is worth appreciating for a moment. In Morse:

W  .--      one dit, two dahs
9  ----.     four dahs, a dit
J  .---     one dit, three dahs
O  ---      three dahs
M  --       two dahs

That callsign is mostly dahs. At any reasonable speed it's just a low rumble of authority rolling in. When it showed up in the log it was unmistakable — like hearing a freight train go by while everyone else is riding bicycles. Good man. Good signal. Strong copy both ways.

The Log

21 QSOs. Kentucky to Colorado, Connecticut to Louisiana. Most of the map coverage was northeast — typical for 40m in the afternoon from the Chicago area. The chasers were fast on the key and the pileup moved cleanly.

Call	State	Time (UTC)
AD4HB	KY	22:18
K9VPL	IN	22:20
AE8EA	OH	22:22
W9JOM	IN	22:23
N8XMS	MI	22:26
N8BIZ	MI	22:27
AI4F	KY	22:28
N4DH	NC	22:30
WB3DDJ	PA	22:31
W4JUU	TN	22:32
AC0A	KS	22:34
W9KVR	IL	22:37
K0AV	CO	22:40
W9DP	IL	22:42
WA3GM	PA	22:44
K9IS	WI	22:45
K3ONW	PA	22:46
K1PL	CT	22:48
W5LD	LA	22:49
W3KW	PA	22:50
N9GXA	IN	22:52

21 QSOs — Ham2K Portable Logger map view

The Rest of the Day

My son had the canoe out on Wolf Lake with a trolling motor and his own 100Ah LiFePO4 battery. He was fishing while I was keying. There's something I like about that — two people doing their respective low-power thing on the water, both self-sufficient, both running battery power that weighs roughly the same. Different output.

The dog came along. She stationed herself at the end of the picnic table bench and watched the lake with the kind of focus that suggested she had opinions about the fishing strategy. She did not transmit anything useful, but her presence was appreciated.

The supervisor. Wolf Lake behind her, 100Ah LiFePO4 in front, FT-991A on the table.

The sky was overcast. The lake was calm. The wire was in the tree. The rig was tuned. Illinois, for once, had nothing to complain about.

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