02/18/2009 | W8ZN/R We had a rocky start that drastically reduced our time on the air for the maiden voyager of the new W8ZN rover and call sign. The uWave rotator died about 20 minutes into operating from our first stop at Reddish Knob, VA (FM08). The 5 and 10 GHz bands weren't working at all, the 2 and 3 GHz receive was way down and 1.2G wasn't transmitting. Turning the truck to point for the uWaves was not going to work for us and working outside in the 0 deg wx was not an option, so we bagged it and went back to the W8ZN QTH after operating for a few hours on the bands that we could muster some QSOs.

Amazingly Terry got everything working by Sunday, including
replacing a bad uWave rotator, finding and fixing the bad keying line
for 2-10GHz bands and fixing the 1.2G transverter. We ended up meeting again around 3:30pm Sunday to do a 4 corner grid at FM08/09/18/19. We managed to capture some pictures from Reddish on Sat. and one of the grids near the four corners on Sun., a commercial uWave site we stopped at. Everything worked fine until the end of the contest. It was great to work those that we could in the short period of time we were on the air. Only about a 50K point effort, but not bad considering all the issues and only about 6-7 hours of operating time.

Lessons learned? Its hard to build a complete 10-band rover in a few, cold, winter nights before a contest and expect it to all work the first time out!

Check out some 360 deg. panoramic pictures here:

Reddish Knob - http://www.k1ra.us/?page_id=16

uWave site - http://www.k1ra.us/?page_id=17

Check out the rest of the W8ZN/R Jan '09 VHF picture album here:

http://www.k1ra.us/wp/v/200901-w8zn-r/

73

Terry W8ZN (ex-K8ISK) and Andy K1RA -- K1RA