2 <title>CODE Rover Report - 1998-09 </title>
5 <center><h1> September 1998 ARRL VHF QSO Party </h1></center>
7 <a href="wewon.jpg"> <img src="thumb-wewon.jpg"> </a>
9 <h2> Bdale's Report </h2>
10 John and I started talking a week or so before the contest about mounting a
11 rover expedition. While cleaning out the basement to prepare for concrete
12 sawing to connect the basements under the new additions, I managed to get all
13 the relevant pieces in a couple of boxes near the door of the shed. For 6m,
14 my TS-430S would link up with the Ten-Tec 6m transverter kit I won at CSVHFS
15 '95, and first fired up in the back yard in the June contest this year. The
16 quad wasn't going to move easily, though, so we didn't have an antenna. For
17 2m, my TS-790A would get a 4-element Cushcraft 2m yagi from the garage. For
18 70cm, I had an un-deployed 11-element K1FO from Rutland Arrays that I bought
19 a while back for a 56kb digital link we never put up, and the TS-790A. For
20 23cm, I had the band module in the TS-790A, but no antenna. John offered to
21 try putting one of the Kent Britain "cheap yagis" together using dimensions from
22 the proceedings of CSVHFS '94.
24 So, the only preparation work we did was John's fabrication of the antenna,
25 my getting all the maybe-useful pieces together in one place in my shed, and
26 a few good ideas from the Rover Forum at CSVHFS '98.
28 Saturday morning, I took my daughter to her violin lessons. John arrived
29 about 12:30, and we sat down over lunch to figure out what we were going to
30 do. We put the roof rails on my Trooper, and played with my new $50 Harbor
31 Freight drill press and an 8' 1x4, ending up with the 1x4 wire-tied to the
32 cross rails, sticking out over the back of the Trooper a couple of feet on
33 the right side, and with a notch in the end that we could stand some Radio
34 Shack antenna mast up through, pinning it into place so that it would stay
35 up and could be rotated by hand. I had 2 5' sections of mast, and John brought
36 one from his garage, so we had 15' of mast.
38 We stared at the 6m quad for a while, then gave in to reality and decided
39 what we really needed was a dipole. I found a 10' section of PVC, a couple
40 of short pieces, some end caps, and a couple of tees... plus some 10-gauge
41 insulated copper wire, and a 15' piece of RG-58 with a BNC on one end. We
42 ended up with a dipole that we could shove into the top of the RS mast, and
43 with a bit of tape, keep it from twisting in the wind. So, of the 4 antennas
44 we used, two were commercial kits, one was a pre-contest hack, and one was
45 a during-contest hack.
47 We stacked up the antennas in the driveway, got the mast vertical, and found
48 suitable lengths of RG-58 with BNC's from my pile of scrap thin-lan cabling.
50 was either bad RG-8, long 9913 runs, or a long heliax run. We maxed out the
51 adapter combinations getting everything wired up, and then tried to test
52 things out. Another round of cable fabrication ensued to get power to the
53 rigs from the binding posts up front under the passenger seat, and we were
56 After a very long time spent scratching our heads, we found a
57 BNC-N adapter that the center pin had pulled apart on, and were up and running
58 on all four bands. By this time, it was mid afternoon, 6m was open and we
59 could hear what we think was a Cuban working a Mexican, and everyone got
60 excited including the carpenters working on my house! Just then, a serious
61 downpour rolled in, scrubbing the construction crew's efforts, and causing
62 us to decide to punt until Sunday, still with no contacts.
64 Sunday morning I spent moving boxes out of the basement to the shed trying to
65 finish getting ready for the impending concrete sawing, and John took care of
66 some errands. He arrived at my place at 11am or so. We tore the antennas
67 down, rigged for travel, and headed out. After a stop for gas, fluids, and
68 munchies, we drove northeast into the southwest corner of DM89. My house is
69 near the south edge of DM79, and we had to drive into DM78, then back across
70 the very southeast corner of DM79 to get to DM89. While we were driving
71 through DM78, we worked N0SWV on both 2m and 70cm FM simplex, and set up a
72 sked for our arrival in DM89.
74 We found a fairly nice little hill with some road construction at the apex
75 that gave us a nice wide area next to the road to park on with no weeds and
76 therefore no bugs to bother us. It took 15-20 minutes to get everything set
77 up and get on the air. We worked N0SWV as scheduled on 2m and then 6m, and
78 then picked up several other stations in the Denver area that heard us. They
79 were busy working N0LL in EM09 on 144.200, so we spun the beams around and
80 managed to work him on both 2m and 70cm SSB! Exciting stuff! W6OAL had the
81 honor of being our first-ever 1296 contact, and his reaction on hearing that
82 we were running 5w into 15' of RG-58 to 11 elements was worth the drive...
83 [grin]. By the time we left, we'd worked 7 stations in 4 grids on 4 bands,
84 and felt like things had been a success already!
86 The dirt road we were on ran due north-south. So, we headed south for a half
87 hour or so, crossing into DM88. We scouted a better site in DM89 along the
88 way, which we marked for next time! I gather DM88 isn't lit unless a rover
89 goes there, as there was quite a bit of interest in us when we got set up, this
90 time in about 10-15 minutes. We worked 12 stations on 2m, and 7 of them on
91 70cm. The 6m setup was giving us fits, with RF getting into the HF rig's
92 processor and driving it crazy every time we keyed. We played with the
93 antenna, moved ferrites around, and never really got it working well again.
94 We got 7 grids, including DM67, EM09, DN70, and DM98. Again, loads of fun.
95 The 23cm to Denver was dead, the problem with EM88 is that there just aren't
96 any good hills that we could see in the corner we were in...
98 From there, we jogged north a touch and then west into the northeast corner
99 of DM78. We found a nice turn-out into a sunflower field on a ridge and set
100 up in well under 10 minutes. Practice, and all that! By this time it was
101 about 5:30pm local, thunderstorms were north and east of us, and some stations
102 had apparently shut down until the storms passed. Even with all that, we
103 worked 9 stations in 4 grids on 2m, and 4 of them on 70cm as well, including
104 N0KM again in DM67... that was cool given the terrain in between us!
106 It was getting late, and the rain was headed our way, so we tore down and
107 headed back for my place. On the way home, we found N0SWV again on 70cm FM
108 simplex, and told him we were headed for home in DM79. We indicated that we
109 could set up briefly on the high point of the road around my neighborhood in
110 Black Forest if anyone was still around, and he encouraged us to do so. So,
111 we set up a mile or so from the house up on top of the hill, and worked 4
112 stations in DM78 and DM79, all on 2m and 70cm, and two of them on 1296, all
113 in about 5 minutes after setting up! By this time it was nearly 8pm local,
114 it was dark, it was cold (I had shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, and no
115 jacket!), and we'd had enough. So, we packed it up and headed to the house.
117 I haven't filled out the forms or added up the score yet, and I don't really
118 care! We had a blast, and are already talking about adding 220 and 902
119 before January... plus maybe working on the 6m setup to cure the HF rig
120 funnies. This was a first-time rover experience for both of us, and I think
123 A few thoughts for next time. Wear long pants, the bug bites on my legs are
124 annoying. Take a couple of chairs. Take more munchies and fluids. Drive
125 less, operate more around the 4-grid corner. Fix the 6m RF problem! Get
126 up on 222 and 902... both would have gotten us more contacts. Put preamps
127 at the antennas! Scrounge something better than RG-58... but keep the BNC's
128 if we can, they were just too easy to take on and off. Another five feet
129 of mast? Definitely need it if we add two more bands. Announce to the locals
130 when we're leaving the house via 70cm FM, they'll be ready when we get to the
133 <h2> John's Photos </h2>
135 <li> <a href="Code_002.jpg">Bdale's Basement - Nearly Empty!</a>, 116k jpeg
136 <li> <a href="Code_006.jpg">Bdale, Working West from DM89</a>, 117k jpeg
137 <li> <a href="Code_007.jpg">The Antennas</a>, 31k jpeg
138 <li> <a href="Code_009.jpg">We forgot chairs... the paint bucket beat nothing!
140 <li> <a href="Code_011.jpg">Thunderstorm east of us in DM88!</a>, 19k jpeg
146 Grid(s) Activated: DM78 DM89 DM88 DM79
149 QSOs Pts/QSO QSO Pts Mult
158 GRIDS ACTIVATED 4 Rover Scoring Used
160 N3EUA CLAIMED SCORE: 1911
164 <a href="http://www.gag.com/~bdale/">Bdale Garbee</A>,
165 $Id: index.html,v 1.3 1999/04/13 20:00:36 bdale Exp $
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