Preparation for the N0LD/R entry into the January 2018 VHF contest began right after the September 2017 VHF Contest.  Nick, KB0YHT, noted that the number of VHF contesters in western Oklahoma was small, but perhaps we could build a campaign to reach out to them.  We decided to focus on an Oklahoma-only rove – to build support for VHF contesting in Oklahoma.  Harvey, W0HGJ, contributed space for a website – www.okrover.info.  Randy, N0LD, built a 40 page Introduction to VHF Contesting presentation and began to go on the road with the intent to educate and collect the names, callsigns, email address, and phone numbers of Oklahoma hams and close-in-states hams who were interested in helping us build support for VHF contesting. Randy went to the Texoma Hamarama in Ardmore and the hamfest in Enid and presented live.  In addition, Randy attended several OKC amateur radio clubs and skyped to one in Woodward and one in St. Louis!  We also contacted several clubs and passed the presentation to them for distribution to VHF contesting-interested hams.  We collected about 50 additional hams for our contact database.  We also decided to add to our 70cm power from 25 watts to 100 watts.  Harvey established a computer CW send/receive capability to backup Randy’s growing CW skills.

The weekend before the contest, Harvey and Randy met to install the antennas and radios onto the custom racks and shelves we had built to fit the Tahoe.  After a day’s worth of work, I drove the vehicle to work on Monday and noticed that the heater was not working… so, we took off the antenna racks and submitted it to Firestone for a review.  They noted that the heater core was not functional, but they couldn’t work on it until the weekend.  I picked it up and drove it to another Firestone for repair – on the way, the transmission slowly ground to a halt.  After a tow to the local Chevy Dealership for an inspection which took two days – now Thursday afternoon, we learned that the transmission, water pump, radiator, heater core, and several other smaller systems were in dire need of repair.  Six hours later, Randy purchased a used Suburban from another dealership. The next morning was spent getting it inspected to ensure it was good to go.  Several concerns needed to be addressed:  How should the power be routed through the firewall?   Will the existing configuration fit in the replacement vehicle without many modifications?  Can the antennas be re-mounted successfully?  Will we ever leave to get in our starting position?  Will this vehicle have mechanical problems on the way?  Undaunted, the modifications started to the vehicle at approximately 1pm with entire team:  Harvey, Nick, and Randy meeting at his house… and five hours later we had installed all of the custom built shelves and racks in the Suburban. We had to re-route the electrical power, build a new mount on the rack for the antennas, but it all worked rather easily.  It was 6 PM on the Friday before the contest!  The trip was on!

For this contest, the goal for our rover activity was to activate all the grids in Oklahoma.  Our itinerary took us from east of Boise City to Guymon, to Woodward, to Lawton for the night.  The next day we drove to Marshall for lunch and on to Hugo where we then proceeded north to the 4 corner grid near Tulsa and then back to OKC. 

We drove to Amarillo, TX Friday night – arrived at about 10 PM – just in time to get a bite to eat at the Big Texan – an Amarillo landmark.  After just 5 hours of rest, we met the Amarillo ham radio club and showed off the new rover at 9 AM on Saturday morning and then headed to Stratford, Texas for lunch at Biddy’s and free concealed carry training!  The menu at Biddy’s was 4 items long.  We arrived just east of Boise City, OK at 12:15 PM CST.  We talked to a (pre-coordinated) ham in NM about 100 miles away, took some pictures, made some phone calls, and attempted a 2m CW QSO with a ham in eastern Oklahoma. 

As the contest begun, we attempted to make contact with the hams in NM and CO that we had coordinated with – the band had changed.  It was no longer open to those areas!  What a difference 45 minutes makes in VHF contesting!  We delayed leaving our first grid to make sure we got at LEAST one contact in that grid – and we did!  We made contact with N0YK in western KS for our first contact.  After that we headed east to Woodward.  Along the way we stopped and made contacts into KS, CO, and even NE (KB0QGT/R).  Our attempts to work the hams in Amarillo and NM fell sadly flat. 

As we got to Woodward we shifted directions to OKC and started being able to make a few contacts there.  As we proceeded south to Lawton, Oklahoma for the night – we turned around and worked WQ0P in Topeka!  As we drove towards Lawton, our antennas were able to pick up Quincy, KK5QS in Duncan.  Quincy woke a lot of hams up as we pulled into Lawton about 11:45 PM – we worked made about 15 contacts in quick succession.  We got to sleep about 1 AM, again, and was up and fed and on the road by 7:30 AM! 

Sunday took us east to Duncan in EM14 and then SE.  We pulled up to a driveway on top of a nice hill and pointed south… and wow, we lost our electronic log.  Luckily, we found an automatically created ADIF backup version and we slowly re-entered the entire log.  We continued making contacts though and were surprised when we made a number of contacts into southern Texas, EL09 area. We turned around and was able to make a contact with Greg, WQ0P near Topeka in EM19 as well.  We also made contacts with Marshall, K5QE in EM31 near the Louisiana/Texas border.  As we dropped into EM13 we continued east across 35 and had lunch with Ross, K5SRT in Marshall, OK near Lake Texoma.  Very nice Chicken Fried steak! 

As we continued east towards Hugo, we were able to make a few more contacts into Texas…but our attempts to reach into EM12 near Dallas were not met with success.  In Hugo, we made digital contacts on 6m with K5QE in both EM23 and EM24.  We were able to add him on all our bands except 1296.  As we headed north to Tulsa, we met with some storms that had caused tornadoes in Texas and Missouri.  Torrential downbursts that made us question whether we were truly safe inside an antenna-laden rover! 

We met with generally good success at 7 PM in our 4-corner attempt near Tulsa – reaching into southern and eastern KS as well as NE OK.  However, not the excellent success we usually had when we showed up at 5.  That is when we learned not to mess with anyone when there is a football game on TV in Oklahoma.  (future attempts will be made in daylight without a football game on!)  We had hurried to maintain schedule so that we could work local contacts in OKC, but we learned that 9 PM is the bedtime here or maybe they were watching football, too?!  However, not to be skunked on our last grid – with 15 minutes to go, we turned north and made contacts on 2 bands with 2 stations in Wichita, KS!  Thanks to them, our score crossed 7000 pts! 

Because of last minute setup of the antennas, we suspect that they are in dire need of some fine-tuning – we seemed to be able to be heard more than we could hear – a classic “alligator” situation.  Randy is continuing to bone up on CW to increase our speed and comprehension.  It was a delight to share the contest with new and old friends on the air!