As we discussed what we would do during the June VHF Contest, a friend in our local club, Ross, K5SRT, expressed interest in joining us.  With little prior VHF contesting experience, Ross brought an engineer's organization to the task.  I loaned a 2m, 1.25m, and a 6m Loop to him; he created his own mobile mast and threw in 3 element 2m beam and a 5 element 70cm beam and a vertical... at the last minute, he threw in a 70 cm loop and had the beginnings of a nice little rover - not bad for his first time out and only 2 months to prepare!  As discussions went on, Ross agreed to join us along our route as an unlimited rover - we also loaned him our third teammate (his 2nd) Nick Farlow, KB0YHT to log and make contacts.  As an unlimited operator, I said why not run an FM radio, too!  So in the last few days before the contest, he spent some "most of the night" activities preparing.

We drove down to Ross's family cabin along Lake Texoma for Thursday evening - testing out all the band and antenna operations - everything worked!  We attended Ham Com in Plano on Friday - we gave a presentation on VHF rovering and attended the DX dinner... 

Bright and early Saturday morning, we departed for the 4 grid square corner north west of Ft Worth...  6m was in - but barely.  Our grid planning had worked out - the grid corner points we had chosen were on a hilltop... we made some immediate contacts with each other of course - but we also picked up some Dallas and Austin stations. Our strategy was that each grid square corner had as many as 64 contacts just between our two rovers... so we did work others, but we didn't spend much time searching - we aimed in the cardinal directions and made a call at each grid corner. 

We headed north to the grid square corner east of Wichita Falls, TX near Ryan, Oklahoma and repeated.  We proceeded north to Ducan and slipped back and forth between EM14 and EM04 to pick up Duncan and Lawton contacts.  Our first real technical challenge came as the sun's light warmed up the FT-736R in its wooden shelf in the back seat - we lost the display.  However, I had set all the operating frequencies and was able to cycle through them from memory to continue to make contacts.  From there, we circled the grid corner near Norge, OK and headed home to OKC for the evening - picking up FM contacts in OKC, Norman, and Edmond.

The next morning the FT-736R display was working again!  We took off early and was rewarded with some voice and digital 6m contacts and operated near the EM15/EM16 line with just K5SRT/R, ourselves, and a couple of other OK stations hearing us.

As we neared the Oklahoma/Kansas line, we worked into the Wichita area (and eastern OK) soundly!  As we did the line shuffle between our rovers, we was rewarded with some KF0M contacts from 6m through 1296!

We stopped for lunch in Wichita; as we went east along highway 400 to Falls River, Kansas, we continued to pick up local FM operators as well as 6m digital and voice.  A highlight of our trip was to work WQ0P on all bands in EM27... we showed K5SRT/R how to line up with him and he worked him on all his bands... EVEN Ross's 1.25m hand held (5 watts) into a horizontal loop!  WQ0P has some nice antennas and it was an awesome moment for all involved... over 120 miles!  

Rick, W0RT worked us in all bands just north of Coffeyville - after we got out of an RF canyon that we had inadvertently driven into!  Just a mile detour and everything was good!  Just before we crossed back into OK, we called KF0M and worked him on all the bands - nice!  We went into OK, and worked him on all except 6m and 1296... definitely a low spot.  As we went south towards Tulsa, we worked local FMers and continued to pull in some 6m QSOs as well.  Our 2nd technical challenge came with the FT-847 - it would go into transmit with no power indicated.  We quickly ran it down - in our removal of the digital cable and the microphone we had bumped the microphone knob and turned it down.  We were quickly operating again on 6m.

Then our favorite spot, Turkey Mountain!  It is right on the EM16 and EM26 line and just a few miles from EM15 and EM25.  We did our "square dance" for our rover contacts and made all our usual contacts except for K5SW... as the evening enhancement on 6m e-skip came around - everyone was working 6m instead of 2m and 70cm!  Still, was able to work several stations in Wichita from Tulsa - a good distance!  Probably 150 miles.  We had a 2m mobile operator that wanted to meet us - so we had pizza and then headed on the journey - picking up a few more FM contacts as well as USB and 6m as we finished the square dance and headed home... 2 hour drive - and only one OK station could be had in the last two hours!  N5PT thanks!

During the contest we didn't hear any tropospheric ducting on any of the bands - it would have been quite welcome!  6m was never great on voice - for our mobile loops it was a little thready.  To work 6m at the same time K5SRT would drop back a few miles so we wouldn't blank each other.

Overall our team was quite happy with what two unlimited rovers can do for each other - our score is just under 50,000 pts.  We continue to work with K5SRT and hope he will continue to rove!  

Additional pictures can be found at our okrover.info website - there is a link to a Facebook page there for additional information!