I have to start by saying that I don’t have much of a setup at home, I have a Hustler 6BTV in the backyard, and a quad band VHF vertical on my roof, so suffice it to say I really don’t focus much on VHF+ from home..
Friday night we had a club meeting, and with the craziness of work this week I didn’t have too much time to prep everything as I’d planned. Radios and Transverters were all gathered, but I hadn’t even looked at the antennas yet. I’d taken a lot apart to clean up the rust and grease the bolts so everything was ready to go. I him-hawed around about doing a portable operation due to ice, but figured I’d leave the final decision to the morning of depending on the forecast.
I started off Saturday Morning with all my plans of getting out roving coming together, until I got out to the garage to get the rack on my car. I’d completely forgotten that due to some of the corrosion on the nuts that I was trying to clean, I needed to replace a couple before being able to securely fasten the rack to my roof. I’d stripped them in my fumbling around in June, and had to use a U-bolt in place of one, and then when taking it off I’d actually broken one of the bolts I used. So after a little while seeing if I’d had anything on hand to make things work, I decided to throw in the towel and operate portable.
I’d loaded up the car with radios, and my bin of coax to setup the rover – nothing usually leaves this bin in between contests, and thought I had everything I needed for a successful portable operation. I stopped for a coffee, and drove a short distance to the local community college in FN03wa which has a great shot to the east and is a regular rover stop. I put the car in utility mode to efficiently run the heat and 12v electronics, and setup my antennas off of a hitch mast mounts. I reached in to grab a piece of coax for my 6m antenna and realized I completely forgot it. Okay, no big deal, I’ll just skip 6m, it sucks, but I’ll just add it on Sunday. Next I went to plug my LPDA into the switch and realized that I didn’t have an adapter for the radio to go from N to BNC, and lastly I realized that I didn’t have anything for 1296 with me (that radio is in a different bin that just didn’t make the stack). I needed to run back home for those things, which required me to completely break down everything I’d taken the time to set up. At this point it was already 3:30pm and we were almost two hours into the contest. I decided to scrap any portable plans I had and put in a decent effort from home.
I figured I could set the microwaves up on my deck, using the mast base that I use for portable operations/field day and my 10ghz Dish, I’d just bring a table out and set a battery, the transverter, and my FT818 outside when someone wanted to work. For all other bands, I’d just try using the verticals. For a base radio I have my Yaesu FT-710, but that doesn’t go above 50mhz, after moving my IC-7100 in the car I’m sort of limited in the VHF+ space, so instead of unmounting that from my car I decided to go QRP and setup the IC-705 inside, and leave my FT818 the quick access radio for microwave operation. Probably the wrong move, but interfacing the 705 for digital is much faster and requires less parts than the 705. In addition to 10ghz I had 2304 (briefly), and 3400 available for quick QSO’s in a similar manner to 10ghz, however I did not setup an additional antenna, and relegated these to the little circuit board antennas either out my upstairs window or from the deck, depending on direction needed. I also used my Kenwood D-74 for 223 FM operation, and it didn’t occur to me until the latter portion of the contest to use my Alinco DJ-G7 for 1296 FM.
I was finally on the air by 4:30pm, after taking some time to get setup and unpack what I needed for a decent home operation. I was able to catch a handful of rovers on a few bands to sweep just about everything I had with them. Around 5:45pm I was making a contact with a local home station to the south of me – we have a fairly obstructed path unfortunately, but he’s high enough up where we can make just about anything. 10ghz in a direct path just was not working due to the trees in his direction on my end, so we were lucky enough to have a decent snow cell coming through at the time.. I pointed north, almost 180 degrees opposite his location, but it would be the direction he was aiming to get to me, and we operated a very strong snow scatter CW contact. I operated only until about 8pm until we went and grabbed dinner with a friend, and then after getting back around 9:15 (oddly quick), I hopped back on until about 10:30pm, sticking on mostly FT8 in the evening.
On Sunday it was a fairly slow start, I hit some FT8 in the morning, attempted a 10ghz contact with some stations up in Canada with no luck, and worked on my QMX+ project during FT8 cycles. 6m had a little bit of an opening late morning, and I was able to nab a few FL and OH stations, as well as FN01, and 04, on 2m which were new from me from the QTH. Aside from a few additional microwave contacts, and also brewing a batch of beer during an FT8 run, I was able to catch a few rovers and additional home stations again, but it started to slow down, and it was almost time for the weekly 3 hours of anxiety that the Buffalo Bills give me (ON TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME!!!!!!!!), so I called it at about 5:45.
From my home station in a little bit of a hole with minimal to use, I ended up with 87 contacts, and 5,611 points. Actually a lot better than I thought I’d do, and believe it or not, on par with some of my early attempts at roving. It was a bit of a bummer that I hadn’t gotten around to fixing some of the issues that went by the wayside, but I’m looking forward to June now. I already have a new rover desk setup that’s pretty well ready to go, or at least will be soon, and i just need to replace some nuts for the top of the Roof Rack, and some U-Bolts elsewhere.
From my home station in a little bit of a hole with minimal to use, I ended up with 87 contacts, and 5,611 points. Actually a lot better than I thought I’d do, and believe it or not, on par with some of my early attempts at roving. It was a bit of a bummer that I hadn’t gotten around to fixing some of the issues that went by the wayside, but I’m looking forward to June now. I already have a new rover desk setup that’s pretty well ready to go, or at least will be soon, and i just need to replace some nuts for the top of the Roof Rack, and some U-Bolts elsewhere.
Roving On 