Not the January Context I had planned for but all in all this was a good functional "test" of old equipment, new equipment and transverters and techniques in advance of the June Contest. Borrowing concepts from Wayne, N6NB, and pressing much of my extra equipment and back up gear in to service we worked on path and site validation for reference, to ease getting folks to good locations that want to rove in San Diego and Imperial Counties while working the microwave bands. While not really operating competatively this did allow me to work out geography for getting all 10 (plus 24Ghz) bands mapped out so I have working and tested locations for rovers going in to future contests.

The propagation report - NONE ! The conditions were as bad as I can recall operating in these events going back almost 10 years. Even though I worked this from a different location than my usual hilltop I had no issues working the stronger home stations behind me in San Diego. Running low power didn't help having almost 2000 to 4000 feet of dirt and rocks to the west and north of this location, but it did allow really weak signal work to not so good locations to the east because i didn't have to pick through QRM to work them. The fun stuff was figuring out how to use much shorter boom length antennas pointing at rocky hillsides and mountain peaks to "bounce" signals in directions that direct paths would not support.

Thanks to all who had the patience to work repeated calls until successful completions and for spending almost four dollars a gallon to fuel their vehicles and participate in this event.

'73 - KG6IYN