This was my third contest in the QRP portable category, and it went really well.  My score will be about double the current QRP portable record for the June contest.

A lot of things came together to make this a good contest.  Once again, I was fortunate to have the Southern California Contest Club rovers visit nine grid squares within QRP range of my location at 6,800' elevation near Tehachapi (DM05).  I was able to work them on all bands through 10 GHz. in grid square after grid square.

Another highlight was having Carrie, W6TAI, do a separate solo rove, driving 873 miles and visiting 10 grid squares on her own route that converged with the route of the SCCC rover group only once. Carrie gave me 40 (yes, forty) multipliers that I wouldn't have otherwise worked by visiting rare desert grid squares such as DM24, DM25 and DM16 with a 10-band station.  She was also able to give rare multipliers to others from coast to coast because of the good conditions on six meters.  Thanks, Carrie.

Six meters also helped make the contest a success for me.  With 10 watts, it was mostly a search and pounce game, but being on a mountain with about 4,000 feet of height above average terrain in two key directions (north and east) certainly helped.  I worked about 50 extra multipliers via E-skip and 65 total mults on six.  Others in Southern California worked far more, but perhaps not with 10 watts.

Another thing that helped was putting up a better antenna system than I used in the last two QRP portable efforts. As shown in the photos, I set up a "Christmas tree" platform to support a small (25-foot) crankup tower next to my car.  I used fairly small antennas for most higher bands, but I put a 4-element Yagi for six on the very top, anticipating that six meters might be important in a June contest (!).  It was also fun having a 2-foot dish on 5.7 and 10 GHz.  Usually I use a smaller dish for those bands when I'm roving.

My portable site was across the road from my beacon station in DM05sb, but with no connection at all between the two.  The beacons run on solar power (the site is 10 miles off the electric power
grid), but I bought a very small generator at the World's Largest Retailer to power the portable station.

It was a great contest--and it gave me a sense of deja vu.  I started out operating portable in my car with a small tower on a Christmas tree stand almost 50 years ago.  I will admit that putting up antennas was a lot easier back then!

73, Wayne