This past weekend’s June VHF contest was a little more of a chore than expected getting everything setup. I’d been meaning to look at my 10ghz transverter ever since last June, in January I just skipped the band, but I wanted it for June. I’ve been having an issue with the PTT line coming off the amplifier, so I sat down at 7:30 am to troubleshoot it (even though I’d had months to do this), and eventually gave up around 10 am, deciding that I’d just do what I’d done in the past, and short the ground line to the PTT line to get it to TX. It’s not ideal, but it works.
Then, as I was taking inventory of antennas and clamps, I’d completely forgotten about an incident I’d had on the expressway the Monday following the January contest where I was driving home from work, and I hadn’t had time to dismount the antennas yet, and my 2304 looper mounting bracket had a bolt break loose. This led the antenna to pivot 90 degrees to my vehicle. I was able to pull over at an exit less than a mile up and remove the antenna, but I hadn’t replaced that little machine screw yet, so I found myself at Home Depot at 10am instead of getting everything on the vehicle right away.
Okay, we’re finally ready to get going and get the roof rack mounted… I pulled out my rack out to get it installed on my vehicle, only to be greeted with a handful of rusted nuts to contend with. While most of them were an east fix with with WD-40 and some muscle, the front drivers side required a little more convincing. I was able to loosen one up, and get it off. As the rack was mostly secured, having 3 of the 4 mounting brackets secured, I began mounting antennas, and let the fourth bolt soak in Coke for about an hour.. This is a great trick if you’ve never tried it – I’ve used it to clean up a boat load of rusted items before, and while I’ve never been a huge pop drinker, the thought that it can dissolve rust has made me an even less frequent consumer.
For a change, this was the hard part… usually mounting antennas is easy, and radio and transverter hook ups take me the most amount of time. Not this year. I only had two radios to put in the vehicle, my IC-705 (new to the setup) for driving the transverters, and the ID-1 for 1296. I mounted my IC-7100 in the car permanently a few months ago, so all I had to do was switch the antennas from the mobiles to the horizontally mounted ones for the contest.
I was on the road by 2:30, an hour or so later than planned which I counted as a victory. There’ve been years where I scrap a whole grid on Saturday because I’m out so late, so I’ll take that. I was at my first stop in FN12 by 3:30pm, and on the air by 3:32. I worked my usuals, caught a few extra grids on 6m, but it was rather non-eventful. I did have one game changer to work with this June – CW. I usually brought a key with me to send dashes to help someone peak my signal, however when it came to actually making any Q’s with it, I was useless. I can count on one hand how many CW contacts I’d made before this contest. I’ve been working on it a but over the last year, and while I need the occasional character reminder, I’ve gotten okay at it around 13wpm. And in this spot it definitely helped with stations I’ll sometimes struggle with – while it’s a great spot to shoot from East to South, it does block an unfortunate amount of stations. CW was a big help for that.
I wound up staying here a little later than planned, not moving grids until about 6:15pm. I took a slightly longer way to my next grid to pop into town and grab dinner, and then headed off to the next one. The whole time I was on the road, just hoping that it wouldn’t rain – while the clouds and rain are great for 10ghz, I need to get out of the vehicle to work it, and really have no desire to sit in the car soaked.
I got to FN02 around 7pm – I was only planning on staying out until 8:30 or 9, so I wanted to make sure I got in the RVHFG member home stations where I could, and hopefully work some additional grids on 2 and 6 that I sometimes struggle with. In the few lulls of activity I picked up one or two extra grids, but nothing crazy, I’d spent a lot of time calling on 6m SSB and had many locals call back to run bands with. I was in the middle of running bands with one guy and just as we were starting to run 10ghz the rain started. I decided that this was going to be my last run and I should probably start getting stuff packed up. It was already 10:15pm, and I really wanted to get back on the road by 7am.
I finally got home about 10:45pm, and by the time I got everything plugged in, coffee set, and was done looking over stuff it was after midnight when I got to bed… and of course I didn’t hear any of my alarms in the morning so it was close to 7:30 when I finally got up. At least I was rested and ready to go! I was on the road by 8, and after a quick stop for a muffin on the way out of town, and a coffee refill just before my grid stop, I was on the air by 9:15.
While this is a great spot in FN13, it does struggle to the North and to the East. Given that I’m to the North East of many club stations here, I’m fine with that as I have a good shot to the West, but can also struggle to the south depending on the degree. I like this spot however , especially in June as it’s rather quiet aside from the occasional passer by curious what all the antennas are for. It also happens to be the furthest spot I venture from my QTH, so starting here on Saturday has always been the best way to go in considering operating time. I was only able to get a 9 band run with one station from here, others were either having issues on their higher bands or I just didn’t have the greatest shot to them.
It was while I was in this grid that we had a pretty great 6m opening – I had a bit of a strategic problem here though, I focused too much on trying to run bands with stations that I caught on the lower bands, and didn’t work enough of the opening. I stayed here until close to 1pm, but really needed to get rolling to my next grid.
I had every intention of hitting another spot in FN13 on the way, however the rain on the way between was a little discouraging as I was hoping to hit stations on 10ghz from those spots. After a quick lunch stop at Panera on the way, and a quick trip home to let the dog out, I pulled up to my last grid, FN03, and was on the air by 3:10pm. When I parked I immediately hopped on 6m FT8 to see what band conditions were like – it seemed like it just died off entirely on the drive between grids, meaning we only had good opening for about 3-4 hours, and I missed about half of it. Bummer.
Oh well, back to running the bands with the more local stations, and to spot myself for the VE3’s I maybe hadn’t caught yet. I dropped a message on a contest slack forum, and immediately had everyone and their brother DMing, Calling, and Texting (something I’m horrible with balancing), so first one in got first dibs at a QSO, and then I went down the list in order of oldest to newest, simply dropping a message to each person stating, “‘Insert Call’ you’re up” with a frequency to go to, and I’d start calling CQ there. I’d almost always give them a 6m frequency in case the band opened back up.
After a few hours, around 7pm, just when things slowed down with the locals and I wanted to try for some 6m DX, my laptop battery died. No big deal, right? Wrong. My charger decided to go too, so after a few more voice Q’s with a few stations I’d missed, and an attempt at logging via HAMRS (not very friendly above 900mhz), I called a quits around 8pm. With an end projected score just around 23k, I’m not overly ecstatic, but it’s not a discouraging score by any means either. When I compare to previous years I need to take into account that I used to have a mini grid circle activity with some other rovers in some previous years. Since we stopped doing that, I need to work around it and work on improvements to catch other multipliers.
I’m actually torn on September, I don’t usually participate as something is seemingly always going on that weekend, or it just so happens to be the sole free weekend I have in the month. I’m considering a /P activation as I’d done in 2021 to really hit the 705 through its paces, but I’m not sure. Some time to consider! In the mean time, I need to get 5ghz going, get my 10ghz PTT problem corrected, and at a minimum, design a new operating desk and station setup, because this was tricky with everything being so different!
Roving On 