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Despite only partially recovering from a nasty cold, I headed out anyway... This is only the second time contesting as a rover, and the first time with all bands operating... Like the rest of the country, bad weather limited propagation... got 6 grids activated, and made 3 "eyeball" rover QSO's during the test: Dinner with N7MX/R and W7GHZ/R, and Sunday Brunch with WE7X/R the next day... just sorta worked out that way... Managed to eek out around 15000 points...
never did that in a contest... Will rove again, bet on it...
W5DF Rover in EM03. John, AB5SS making contacts with Al, W5LUA in EM13 on 5.7 and 10.3 GHz. Photo by W5DF. |
Of course the only day that it snowed was during the January VHF contest! Not good for Single operator portable category but I did it anyway! F2 activity was great towards Europe PRIOR to the contest. After the contest started only a little F2 was heard on Saturday. Sunday was a bit better for F2 activity when I heard the TF3SIX beacon coming in. When poor TF3AX came in, the pileup was the worst that I had ever heard on Six Meters. I did manage five F2 QSOs with west coast stations using 10 Watts along with the usual line-of-sight contacts. No Sporadic-E heard. FUN!
K2DRH EN41vr - m2 6M2.5WL @113', m2 2x 18XXX at 115' and 128', 2x 222-7wl, 2x 432-13wla, 2x47el 902/3 and 2x55el 1296 Directive Systems Loopers on 30' of Rohn 45G rotating on top of 80' of Rohn 55G using K0XG Rotating Tower Equipment. |
73 de Bob
This weekend had too much stuff going on to do a full-out VHF contest effort. Saturday morning, my fiancee and I competed in an orienteering meet held at the LBJ National Grasslands near Decatur, TX. So, we began the contest in EM13, about an hour after the start, and drove back to Austin, working stations as we could. The gear in the car is not well-suited to a VHF rover contest effort. It was an Icom IC-706MkIIG, a Larsen dual-band mobile whip on a trunk lip mount, and an MFJ six meter whip on a mag mount in the middle of the roof. When we first got rolling in EM13, I discovered that the six meter antenna had extremely high SWR, and did not put out any power, so I was limited to 2M and 70cm. I had brought a Super CMOS Keyer III I built years ago and some paddles, but despite checking out fine the night before, the keyer's keying line seemed to be shorted out. So, we went with phone-only. Anyway, with a tiny, vertically-polarized antenna less than a meter off the ground, there were a limited number of stations I could work. I had anticipated this, and as I could only operate a portion of the contest period anyway, I figured I'd just work what I could. I was happy to be able to say I worked at least one station in every grid we travelled to, although I would have been sweating it had N5TIF not been such a consistently strong signal in EM11, even as far south as Temple. He was the only station heard in that grid. As we drove into Austin, I heard not a single contester calling CQ. All of my CQs went completely unanswered until finally, less than ten miles from downtown and three minutes before we arrived at our destination, I heard W5DF/R. We tried to work each other for a couple of minutes, as we faded in and out of each others' receivers. Finally, we pulled up into the parking lot of our destination and all I can hear is one of the big gun stations in EM00 _conversing_ with W5DF/R! He's telling the rover who I am, from which station I normally operate, etc., etc., and basically prevented me from completing a QSO with W5DF/R. I waited around as long as I reasonably could before getting out of the car, but he just wouldn't shut up. I never did hear W5DF/R again. I got on again later in the evening on my drive to and from Georgetown (EM10,) where I put in a couple of hours in a multi-two effort in the North American QSO Party, and worked a couple more stations. On Sunday, we drove over to see friends near Johnson City, hitting EM00 in the process. We drove all the way through Austin and Dripping Springs, calling CQ on every hilltop, but heard nobody until we were almost at our destination. I was then able to work K5LLL on two meters, but we couldn't connect on 432, even though I heard him quite well on that band. It was weird - there was a sharp ridge right in front of our path to K5LLL, and sometimes he would peak to S6 or so - I guess the ridge diffractions were occasionally lining up just right. Much later in the evening, on the drive home, I worked another station on two bands in the last hour of the contest. I don't know if I'll be rovering again or not. It wasn't something I'd put a lot of preparation into. I just figured as long as we were travelling through so many grids, I would make a few stations happy. The real highlight of the weekend was working VP8THU on 15 meters phone :-)
First full-time effort in this contest. No DX on 6 but some nice backscatter.
The 6M F2 Sunday afternoon was most welcome, but even better was working VE2JWH FN35 for a new grid on 1296.
Log submitted by N5PMP@ARRL.NET
OUR FIRST ARRL VHF CONTEST AS A LOCAL CLUB...LOTS OF FUN
Very poor tropo conditions in so. Texas. Plus, this was FOOTBALL weekend and contests take a back seat at this station to the NFL playoffs! Managed one F-2 qso on 6 meters w/VO1TJM
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