This is about roving in the January, 2020 VHF Contest, but it's really about more than that.  The FCC is proposing to abolish our 3.4 GHz band and severely limit amateur radio access to 5.7 GHz.

This will affect amateurs, including me, A LOT.  Over the last 20 years I've invested about $10,000 in weak signal hardware for each of those bands.  I can document that.  I have made thousands of two-way contacts on those bands; I can document that, too.  In this one contest, I made about 45 contacts on 3.4 GHz and a similar number on 5.7 GHz.  I hold the world terrestrial distance record on 3.4 GHz over a path from the big island of Hawaii to Panorama Heights, Orange County, Calif.

Amateurs have been at the forefront of propagation research on the VHF, UHF and microwave bands.  Hams were the first to demonstrate that tropospheric ducts could support two-way communication over paths exceeding 2,000 miles on the VHF and higher bands.  At first the scientific community believed these ducts were a tropical phenomenon, but recently amateurs have shown that ducts will support VHF+ communications from the Cape Verde Islands (400 miles from west Africa) to places as far north as Scotland and Ireland--far north of what anyone would call the tropics.  I have been one of the people who said these tropo paths exist in the Atlantic Ocean as well as the Pacific--and I've said so in conference papers.  I've been preparing a station to study tropo ducting in the Atlantic on the 2.3 and 3.4 GHz amateur bands (at a substantial financial outlay).  I've done conference papers about that, too.

If we lose access to the 3.4 GHz band, that will all come to an end. 

The FCC will soon accept comments and reply comments from the public, including radio amateurs, about the plan to remove amateurs from 3.4 GHz.  I hope others will join me in asking the FCC to allow amateur access to at least a small segment of the 3.4 and 5.7 GHz bands.  Feel free to use any of the arguments I've made here, but please put them in your own words so it doesn't sound like we're all copying the same boiler-plate message.

Now, about the January 2020 VHF Contest... 

I'm thankful for many things about the January rove.  After reading descriptions of the ice, snow, freezing rain and high winds in the east and midwest, I'm thankful for the good weather we had in Califonia.  The daytime highs were in the 50s and 60s, with overnight lows in the high 30s and 40s.  There was no rain, let alone snow.  I'm also thankful that I can still rove after 63 years on the air.  If my score holds up, this will mean I've won at least an ARRL division-leader certificate in a VHF contest in seven different decades:  the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and now the 2020s.  It's been quite an adventure.

Now--more than ever before--I'm thankful for the friends who have helped me put together rover stations at a time when I can barely walk.  Thanks especially to N6GP, W6IT and W6TAI for doing the heavy lifting to pack stations at home before the January contest.  Tim and Greg did the real work to load three extra 11-band stations into the back of my F150 to take to fellow rovers I was planning to meet in Kettleman City.  Greg also picked up a station for his own use during the Southern California portion of my rove.  Carrie roved in the minivan that normally tows a tower trailer, but with everything in or on the minivan itself for this contest.  I'm also grateful to N6HC for operating the 10-band station at Panorama Heights and following us as we roved.  Arnie is best known for his HF DXpeditions to islands on the most-wanted list, but he's also right at home working DX on the VHF and microwave bands.

After roving in four Los Angeles grid squares Saturday, I met K6MI, NI6G and WA6IPZ Sunday morning.  I'm thankful for their help in installing microwave stations in their vehicles so we could rove through six San Joaquin Valley grid squares, always followed by W6YEP at the W6TV station on Bear Mountain near Fresno.  We worked W6TV on 11 bands from all six grid squares--with one exception of our own choosing.  At the very end of the contest, Pat and I needed to set up our 24 GHz stations on tripods one more time.  We'd already worked on 11 bands (through 24 GHz) five times on paths of about 90 miles.  Now we had just worked on 10 bands from a sixth grid square, DM07.  But it was dark and cold (by our standards).  Here were two very tired septuagenarians contemplating hauling our tripods outside one more time to work on 24 GHz on a path that we've spanned in many previous contests.  We both knew we would have good scores with or without one more 24 GHz QSO.  "Do you really want to do this?" I asked on our 222 MHz liaison frequency.  "Not really," Pat said.  So we skipped a slam-dunk DM07-DM06 QSO on 24 GHz.  I guess we're not as young and hungry as we once were.

After the contest ended at 8 p.m. local time, John, Erik and Allen did all the heavy lifting to re-load three microwave stations into my truck.  Then we said goodbye and drove away after a long day and weekend.  Before I started the 4-5 hour drive back home, though, I stopped to unwind and eat at a Fresno In-N-Out Burger location.  In-N-Out is a California institution and this place was jammed with young people, as usual.  As I sat there alone, I listened to young men 60 years my junior trying to score with young women who were also 60 years my junior.  Hmmm...  Everything has changed, and yet nothing has changed.  I was happy with my contest score and a little amused that "it's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die... as time goes by."

-N6NB