Saturday morning started out chilly, -11 below zero F kind of chilly.  But there was a temperature inversion up on the hillside above Anchorage and at Flattop it was a balmy -4 degrees.  Setup the 6m loop up on a mast beside the truck in a snow bank.  Got the radios tuned up and at 1900GMT started working stations.  First off was KL7UW on 2m and at 65 miles was a good copy from BP40 to BP51.

Worked multiple station in the same grid I was in and after a couple of hours decided to move to another Grid.  Driving west past the Airport puts you on the edge of Cook Inlet and inside BP41.  Set up again and worked another batch of locals giving them a new grid to log.  By far the big gun here was KL6M with his commanding station up on the hillside above Anchorage.  The small pistol title has to go to KL3JI who walked into the park at Flattop to the observation deck and worked multiple bands portable!

Only real problem I ran into was in my hurry to get the antennas back up on the truck for 1.25m and 33cm I reversed the connections, after scrambling a bit found and corrected that.  Amazing how poor a 1.25m radio works on a 33cm antenna…hi

The 6m loop worked well, while no 6m openings popped up it did allow me to work everyone in  range who had 6m.

My setup mobile is as follows:  FT-857D for HF-UHF, Kenwood TM-631A for 1.25m, and a Motorola GTX for 33cm.

When things warm up again I will clean up the installation as it’s a jumble at the moment.

All in all great contest, more stations on the usual and here it is Sunday afternoon and I am still listening for additional contacts.  Looking forward to the next ARRL VHF contest!