Happy New Year Everyone!
Hard to believe it’s been about six months since I posted last – it’s for sure been a busy few months, but am really hoping to get back in the rhythm that I was over the summer. Starting a new job, with even a minor change in schedule, tends to throw off all of your old patterns and routines so I’m still trying to adjust to that a little… even though I’m three months in now. I’m also really beginning to come to the conclusion that I have too many hobbies – between running, cycling, getting into triathlons that have required a lot of training, radio, shooting, hockey, the little bit of gaming I get to do from time to time, and then just essentially journaling my activities here – I really need to start narrowing down what I want to spend the most of my free time doing because between that and working a full-time job, there really just aren’t enough hours in the day.
But to that end, today isn’t the day to start any of that.. I’m hammering out plans for this weekends VHF contest.. I’ll be operating in my usual, January capacity of the local four grids only – especially due to our recent bout of snow here in Western NY, that continues to fall as I type this even. I’m yet again going to be limiting myself to 9 bands – 50mhz through 10ths, with a gap at 5678 as I just haven’t had the time to sit down and get 5 ghz squared away (see note above about too many hobbies). I’m also still going to be rolling with the LPDA for a good chunk of the bands as I decided to sink some money into my home station vs. any rover upgrades this year – later post to come about my last few months with the Yaesu FT-710 AESS. Given that plans have changed though, and instead of my planned fishing trip I’ll now be on for the June contest this year, I may reevaluate this in the early spring and throw a little checkbook engineering into the Rover (hope there’s enough room in the car coming back from Dayton, just in case).
This will be January Contest Number 2 with the EV, and we’re supposed to be getting some bitter cold temps to be roving in, so this could get interesting. I believe the low I experienced last year was in the 20’s with some gusting winds, so we’ll see how this goes with a high temperature of 24 degrees on Sunday at Noon, and the low being 8 on Saturday Evening… when I’ll be doing the bulk of my operating. The worst that happens is that I decide to pack it in and operate from home on the bottom 4, but I think we’ll be fine!
I’ll hopefully be on the air right at contest start on Saturday, but likely won’t be setting up until Saturday morning, so it’ll be dependent on that process – I’ll operate until about 2100-2130 local Saturday night. Sunday, back on the air by 0800, shift grids about 1200 (45 mins back to FN03), and will operate until about 1800-1815 local. As I like to always point out, I’ve been a Bills fan longer than I’ve been a Ham, so when they make it this far I’m sacrificing some contest time.
Hope to catch some of you on the Air, and Go Bills!!!
Roving On 