I was sort of slacking going into this contest – I had all of my gear ready, but I just kept dragging my feet to go out and actually get everything setup. Over the last week, areas of Western NY have been hit with up to 6.5 Feet of snow, and as much as I love January because of that additional challenge of the elements, there’s only so much you can do in some situations. Ignoring the weather factor though, a good chunk of my foot dragging was related to not getting three projects completed that I’d wanted to work on:
1) 222 and 1296 SSB: I’d hooked up and tested power for my 222 transverter, but never actually hooked everything up and made sure it was good to go. With that, I never even poked around for a 1296 transverter, so I was still stuck on FM only here… not the end of the world, but I had improvements in mind that I really wanted to execute.
2) IF Switching for 900+: My transverter layout for 900, 2304, and 3400 had been decided, and I’ve had them for the last few contests, but I never looked into switching for the IF radio beforehand, so I was stuck having to change jumpers between using the 2304, and 3400 transverters.
3) More User Friendly 10 ghz: I’d begun to start moving my 10ghz setup over to a tripod mounted, different setup, but realized that my IF radio would be in the car driving 902, 2304, and 3400, so I had to put that on pause, and scrap the band entirely
In the end, the only two things that changed between June and this contest was the coax running from the LPDA and Looper – which did give a massive improvement in performance, and use of a 6m Halo over the 3 Element beam. The halo performed mediocre at best, being unable to work what should have been “gimme” contacts in some cases, so this will be revisited before June.
Saturday afternoon I finally got on the road to my first stop in FN12 around 3 (an hour after the contest start), after a quick stop for some drive-thru lunch. The roads in the spots that I was heading to were fairly well maintained with the recent snowfall that we’ve gotten, but the drifts and winds were causing the roads to be covered again pretty quickly after they were plowed. I was on site and on the air by 3:40, and pretty much started on 2m, and made that my calling location, I worked about 30 contacts from this site, which can sometimes be a bear reaching to the West because of the tree lines. Around 5pm I noticed an issue with my 220 radio – I’d have audio, and suddenly it’d begin to drive into nothing. If someone had a strong signal, it’d pick back up very briefly at the beginning of their transmission, and then it’d fade out. It acted this way long enough for me to make a handful of contacts, and then just completely stopped working. Usually I bring a 220 HT with me as a backup, or to use if someone local is vertically polarized, but I realized two things I forgot when I parked… that HT, and my CW key, so I was without 220 for the rest of the evening.
I stayed here until about 6, and decided that with the way the winds were blowing, if I was going to head to the hilltop that I wanted to, I should probably get moving while it was still pretty early.
What should have taken me about 15 mins to get from site to site took me closer to 40 due to snow and ice – it was a slow crawl down a few side roads that I wouldn’t normally take in less than ideal winter conditions, but nothing an average car couldn’t handle. The spot in FN02 had pretty tall drifts of snow on either side, worse than the spot I was sitting in FN12, and with the howling wind at this point, the road stayed fairly snow covered. After getting on the air and half keeping an eye outside, I determined that I wasn’t going to stay out much past 8:30 – the radar showed more snow incoming, and in our area I’ve noticed the plows aren’t out through the night as much as they used to be. Without 220, I worked my usual suspects from up here, anybody that I could get a sweep with (shy of 220) I did, I sent out a blast message to a group that I was calling CQ on a frequency, and they should call there if they wanted to work. After a little while in the grid while I was attempting to work someone on 2304, I lost power to my IF radio, which I typically will run off of an internal battery. I reached back in my bin for the extra power cord I usually have and realized that it was already in use in my setup. I opened my glovebox where I usually keep a spare powerpole to 12v plug, and forgot that I’d taken that out a few weeks prior. Having no power to the IF and being down 220 left be stuck with only 4 bands, 6, 2, 440, and 1296. At this point I decided to work some 6 and 2m FT8 for another half hour and then call it a night.
Now, the reason I called this post, “Know your limit, rove within it,” goes back to a NYS gambling commission ad, “know your limit, play within it,” I considered taking a long rove, but when the temps dip below 10 degrees, EV range tends to diminish significantly. Driving an electric vehicle as a rover in the dead of January takes some getting used to – this was my second outing for a January VHF contest in this setup, and I’ve learned some lessons… no, I didn’t get held up at chargers for hours, though I did stop at my furthest point to juice up for 15 mins and grab a bottle of water. You need to know your vehicle’s limit when you’re doing something like this, or even just taking a long trip somewhere – it doesn’t matter if it’s gas or electric, you need to know what your maximum range is, and give yourself a buffer zone. I didn’t want to take a gamble, so even on the nice weather day (though still cold), I stuck within 50 miles of home.
Day 2 I started out the morning a bit later than planned, between planning out the next day, and trying to find an extra power cord for my IF radio I didn’t get out the door until almost 9, meaning I wasn’t on site at my next grid until a little after 10. At least the beauty of the Halo for 6 meant that I didn’t have any work to do when I got to my site, I just could fire up the radio and go! I’d been listening on 2m FM the last 20 mins of my ride and heard lots of stations calling, so I decided that I’d start off there and run bands with anyone that had additional.
I stuck in the office park lot I was in until about noon, however then a whole building and grounds crew showed up to clear the parking lot and sidewalks of the snow. I was able to sweep with most of the stations that I knew had the same 8 bands I did, a few exceptions for people that had a building between us. This grid had one of my favorite contacts – forgive me for forgetting the call of the station, however he was at an odd angle from me with part of a small treeline between us, so I pointed my looper at an angle to the building to angle the 2.3 and 3.4ghz toward him. He sounded clearer there than on any of the other bands, it’s cool the way that works.
I decided to get out of the way so they could get their work done, and started back towards home a bit. Since I was leaving earlier than planned, I did a brief stop in another spot in FN13 to hand out some quick points, and then ran back down to a different hilltop in FN02 to try and catch those I missed on the broken bands. After an hour and a half or so in 02, I headed back over to FN03 – another rover had called me on the way back there and asked where I was planning on going, we had overlapped our schedules in one spot. I had somewhere different in mind to try, and told him to go ahead to that spot and I’d try somewhere new. I’m glad I did because even though it didn’t quite have the same shot off into the hills, it still performed very well, especially to the West where I often have issues. I operated normally here for a couple of hours, and in my last hour (the 5pm hour for me, Go Bills!) tried to make skeds with the few home stations I hadn’t worked yet with 8 bands.
At 5:45 I packed it in to go watch some bad decisions be made by the Bills, and lose 24-27 to the Chiefs……… the Chiefs…….. again……
All in all it was a pretty good contest! For phoning it in a little bit because I was slow to get everything ready, and not having all of my hoped projects completed I can’t be upset with my score. My goal (at a minimum) for June is to work on switching for the IF into the various transverters – I’m using two antenna ports on the radio, and then just moving a jumper between 2 and 3 ghz – a simple switch to throw the IF from one to the other is a very easy fix that I keep forgetting to put in place. I’d also like to get my 5ghz transverter all ready to go. Getting 5 & 10ghz tripod mounted for June would be ideal.
Thanks to everyone I worked, and we’ll catch you on the air in June!
Roving On 