09/14/2004 | K1WHS We had a great weekend, with nice weather, and some good conditions on Saturday night. We were operational on all the bands between 50 and 24 GHz. The operators included: W1MRQ (Just back from Antarctica), W2PED, W1SD, K1DY, K1TOL, N1DPM, WA1T, N2CEI, Sandra, and BA1LY. N1LBI ran the kitchen and we sure ate well. All electric power was homebrew as were all the RF amplifiers. Rigs were all TenTec OMNI Vs and K2s. Our new wrinkle this year was a new 144 MHz array. We call it the LVA, an acronym for Large Vertical Array. The LVA consists of 16 X 5 element 144 MHz yagis stacked vertically and taking up about 85 ft of tower space! It worked like the proverbial "hose". Best DX was out to the EN70s on 144 Saturday night. It was great not having to turn the beam all the time much. The LVA covers from Rhode Island out West to Buffalo. The microwaves were quite busy, with 24 GHz working very well for the first time. We had spent much time tweaking the dishes and aligning the tower to be sure the RF was actually on the horizon. I think it worked!! We totalled 8 grids on 24 GHz. A few years ago 8 grids on 2.3 GHz was cause for celebration!! Last year, I think we had three grids on 24 GHz. We broke 400 total grids for the first time.
Some other highlights: 61 grids on 144 MHz. 51 grids on 432, and 29 grids on 3.4 GHz.




We're all stoked up and planning for next year! Thanks to all who pointed their antennas our way. -- K1WHS