2004 ARRL June VHF Contest
07/12/2004 |
WA2IID/R
Once again Tom (KB2SSS) and I had a great time. Not as high of a score as we would have liked, but great time! We operated all bands up to 10368.
We started in FN21tq just south of Ellenville NY. Great site to the south and east. Not too bad to the northeast. Then we went through a corner of FN31 near Kingston NY. Not a good site at only a couple hundred feet overlooking the Hudson river, but a beautiful view. We parked next to the fire house not realizing ahead of time that they had a big fair going on (Roving can be full of surprises)! Then up to FN32 where we spent the night at a motel just off the NY Thruway. Again not a good site, but Tom managed to make some contacts while I slept. Then in the AM, up the hill a bit west of Schenectady (FN22) to a bit higher location where we did a bit better. In September we are going to try out a better location for FN22. Then up west of Saratoga to FN23 and over to Mount Equinox in Vermont (FN33kd) to finish up. Lots of RF noise on Equinox these days and the trees are starting to get a bit tall, but a great site nevertheless. I thought I had made arrangements to leave the mountain late so we could work through the evening to the end of the contest, but they never got put into place so we were "thrown off" at 2000 local. Rather disapointing in that we got there very late in the afternoon and only had a couple hours. We will have to take this possibility into account next time.
Only equipment failure was the new 24G WBFM station that had no audio (I guess slamming the car door on the microphone was not very good for it!). Only other failure was in my head, when I tried to work W3CCX from FN21tq on 5760, only later realizing I did not turn power on to the LO! Obviously we didn't hear each other. Sorry guys.
Equipment included:
50 Mhz ICOM 706 to 4 el yagi on front of van
144, 432 and 1296 - Kenwood TS790 with 6 foot boom yagis and a
mirage amp on 144
222 TS440 and DEMI transverter, Mirage brick
Microwave IF is a TenTec 6N2 with DEMI transverters
2304 DEMI barefoot 1W K1WHS Yagi
3456 DEMI with 35 wat amp K1WHS yagi
5760 homebrew transverter with small horn
10368 DEMI with qualcom 1W and 2 foot dish
Roving is great fun, particularly on a great weather weekend like this. Hope all had as good of a time as we did.
73
Jack
WA2IID -- WA2IID
We started in FN21tq just south of Ellenville NY. Great site to the south and east. Not too bad to the northeast. Then we went through a corner of FN31 near Kingston NY. Not a good site at only a couple hundred feet overlooking the Hudson river, but a beautiful view. We parked next to the fire house not realizing ahead of time that they had a big fair going on (Roving can be full of surprises)! Then up to FN32 where we spent the night at a motel just off the NY Thruway. Again not a good site, but Tom managed to make some contacts while I slept. Then in the AM, up the hill a bit west of Schenectady (FN22) to a bit higher location where we did a bit better. In September we are going to try out a better location for FN22. Then up west of Saratoga to FN23 and over to Mount Equinox in Vermont (FN33kd) to finish up. Lots of RF noise on Equinox these days and the trees are starting to get a bit tall, but a great site nevertheless. I thought I had made arrangements to leave the mountain late so we could work through the evening to the end of the contest, but they never got put into place so we were "thrown off" at 2000 local. Rather disapointing in that we got there very late in the afternoon and only had a couple hours. We will have to take this possibility into account next time.
Only equipment failure was the new 24G WBFM station that had no audio (I guess slamming the car door on the microphone was not very good for it!). Only other failure was in my head, when I tried to work W3CCX from FN21tq on 5760, only later realizing I did not turn power on to the LO! Obviously we didn't hear each other. Sorry guys.
Equipment included:
50 Mhz ICOM 706 to 4 el yagi on front of van
144, 432 and 1296 - Kenwood TS790 with 6 foot boom yagis and a
mirage amp on 144
222 TS440 and DEMI transverter, Mirage brick
Microwave IF is a TenTec 6N2 with DEMI transverters
2304 DEMI barefoot 1W K1WHS Yagi
3456 DEMI with 35 wat amp K1WHS yagi
5760 homebrew transverter with small horn
10368 DEMI with qualcom 1W and 2 foot dish
Roving is great fun, particularly on a great weather weekend like this. Hope all had as good of a time as we did.
73
Jack
WA2IID -- WA2IID
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