--- /dev/null
+<head>
+ <title>CODE Rover Report - 1998-09 </title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<center><h1> September 1998 ARRL VHF QSO Party </h1></center>
+
+<a href="wewon.jpg"> <img src="thumb-wewon.jpg"> </a>
+
+<h2> Bdale's Report </h2>
+John and I started talking a week or so before the contest about mounting a
+rover expedition. While cleaning out the basement to prepare for concrete
+sawing to connect the basements under the new additions, I managed to get all
+the relevant pieces in a couple of boxes near the door of the shed. For 6m,
+my TS-430S would link up with the Ten-Tec 6m transverter kit I won at CSVHFS
+'95, and first fired up in the back yard in the June contest this year. The
+quad wasn't going to move easily, though, so we didn't have an antenna. For
+2m, my TS-790A would get a 4-element Cushcraft 2m yagi from the garage. For
+70cm, I had an un-deployed 11-element K1FO from Rutland Arrays that I bought
+a while back for a 56kb digital link we never put up, and the TS-790A. For
+23cm, I had the band module in the TS-790A, but no antenna. John offered to
+try putting one of the Kent Britain "cheap yagis" together using dimensions from
+the proceedings of CSVHFS '94.
+<p>
+So, the only preparation work we did was John's fabrication of the antenna,
+my getting all the maybe-useful pieces together in one place in my shed, and
+a few good ideas from the Rover Forum at CSVHFS '98.
+<p>
+Saturday morning, I took my daughter to her violin lessons. John arrived
+about 12:30, and we sat down over lunch to figure out what we were going to
+do. We put the roof rails on my Trooper, and played with my new $50 Harbor
+Freight drill press and an 8' 1x4, ending up with the 1x4 wire-tied to the
+cross rails, sticking out over the back of the Trooper a couple of feet on
+the right side, and with a notch in the end that we could stand some Radio
+Shack antenna mast up through, pinning it into place so that it would stay
+up and could be rotated by hand. I had 2 5' sections of mast, and John brought
+one from his garage, so we had 15' of mast.
+<p>
+We stared at the 6m quad for a while, then gave in to reality and decided
+what we really needed was a dipole. I found a 10' section of PVC, a couple
+of short pieces, some end caps, and a couple of tees... plus some 10-gauge
+insulated copper wire, and a 15' piece of RG-58 with a BNC on one end. We
+ended up with a dipole that we could shove into the top of the RS mast, and
+with a bit of tape, keep it from twisting in the wind. So, of the 4 antennas
+we used, two were commercial kits, one was a pre-contest hack, and one was
+a during-contest hack.
+<p>
+We stacked up the antennas in the driveway, got the mast vertical, and found
+suitable lengths of RG-58 with BNC's from my pile of scrap thin-lan cabling.
+Everything else
+was either bad RG-8, long 9913 runs, or a long heliax run. We maxed out the
+adapter combinations getting everything wired up, and then tried to test
+things out. Another round of cable fabrication ensued to get power to the
+rigs from the binding posts up front under the passenger seat, and we were
+ready to test.
+<p>
+After a very long time spent scratching our heads, we found a
+BNC-N adapter that the center pin had pulled apart on, and were up and running
+on all four bands. By this time, it was mid afternoon, 6m was open and we
+could hear what we think was a Cuban working a Mexican, and everyone got
+excited including the carpenters working on my house! Just then, a serious
+downpour rolled in, scrubbing the construction crew's efforts, and causing
+us to decide to punt until Sunday, still with no contacts.
+<p>
+Sunday morning I spent moving boxes out of the basement to the shed trying to
+finish getting ready for the impending concrete sawing, and John took care of
+some errands. He arrived at my place at 11am or so. We tore the antennas
+down, rigged for travel, and headed out. After a stop for gas, fluids, and
+munchies, we drove northeast into the southwest corner of DM89. My house is
+near the south edge of DM79, and we had to drive into DM78, then back across
+the very southeast corner of DM79 to get to DM89. While we were driving
+through DM78, we worked N0SWV on both 2m and 70cm FM simplex, and set up a
+sked for our arrival in DM89.
+<p>
+We found a fairly nice little hill with some road construction at the apex
+that gave us a nice wide area next to the road to park on with no weeds and
+therefore no bugs to bother us. It took 15-20 minutes to get everything set
+up and get on the air. We worked N0SWV as scheduled on 2m and then 6m, and
+then picked up several other stations in the Denver area that heard us. They
+were busy working N0LL in EM09 on 144.200, so we spun the beams around and
+managed to work him on both 2m and 70cm SSB! Exciting stuff! W6OAL had the
+honor of being our first-ever 1296 contact, and his reaction on hearing that
+we were running 5w into 15' of RG-58 to 11 elements was worth the drive...
+[grin]. By the time we left, we'd worked 7 stations in 4 grids on 4 bands,
+and felt like things had been a success already!
+<p>
+The dirt road we were on ran due north-south. So, we headed south for a half
+hour or so, crossing into DM88. We scouted a better site in DM89 along the
+way, which we marked for next time! I gather DM88 isn't lit unless a rover
+goes there, as there was quite a bit of interest in us when we got set up, this
+time in about 10-15 minutes. We worked 12 stations on 2m, and 7 of them on
+70cm. The 6m setup was giving us fits, with RF getting into the HF rig's
+processor and driving it crazy every time we keyed. We played with the
+antenna, moved ferrites around, and never really got it working well again.
+We got 7 grids, including DM67, EM09, DN70, and DM98. Again, loads of fun.
+The 23cm to Denver was dead, the problem with EM88 is that there just aren't
+any good hills that we could see in the corner we were in...
+<p>
+From there, we jogged north a touch and then west into the northeast corner
+of DM78. We found a nice turn-out into a sunflower field on a ridge and set
+up in well under 10 minutes. Practice, and all that! By this time it was
+about 5:30pm local, thunderstorms were north and east of us, and some stations
+had apparently shut down until the storms passed. Even with all that, we
+worked 9 stations in 4 grids on 2m, and 4 of them on 70cm as well, including
+N0KM again in DM67... that was cool given the terrain in between us!
+<p>
+It was getting late, and the rain was headed our way, so we tore down and
+headed back for my place. On the way home, we found N0SWV again on 70cm FM
+simplex, and told him we were headed for home in DM79. We indicated that we
+could set up briefly on the high point of the road around my neighborhood in
+Black Forest if anyone was still around, and he encouraged us to do so. So,
+we set up a mile or so from the house up on top of the hill, and worked 4
+stations in DM78 and DM79, all on 2m and 70cm, and two of them on 1296, all
+in about 5 minutes after setting up! By this time it was nearly 8pm local,
+it was dark, it was cold (I had shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, and no
+jacket!), and we'd had enough. So, we packed it up and headed to the house.
+<p>
+I haven't filled out the forms or added up the score yet, and I don't really
+care! We had a blast, and are already talking about adding 220 and 902
+before January... plus maybe working on the 6m setup to cure the HF rig
+funnies. This was a first-time rover experience for both of us, and I think
+we're hooked!
+<p>
+A few thoughts for next time. Wear long pants, the bug bites on my legs are
+annoying. Take a couple of chairs. Take more munchies and fluids. Drive
+less, operate more around the 4-grid corner. Fix the 6m RF problem! Get
+up on 222 and 902... both would have gotten us more contacts. Put preamps
+at the antennas! Scrounge something better than RG-58... but keep the BNC's
+if we can, they were just too easy to take on and off. Another five feet
+of mast? Definitely need it if we add two more bands. Announce to the locals
+when we're leaving the house via 70cm FM, they'll be ready when we get to the
+first grid.
+
+<h2> John's Photos </h2>
+<ul>
+<li> <a href="Code_002.jpg">Bdale's Basement - Nearly Empty!</a>, 116k jpeg
+<li> <a href="Code_006.jpg">Bdale, Working West from DM89</a>, 117k jpeg
+<li> <a href="Code_007.jpg">The Antennas</a>, 31k jpeg
+<li> <a href="Code_009.jpg">We forgot chairs... the paint bucket beat nothing!
+ </a>, 119k jpeg
+<li> <a href="Code_011.jpg">Thunderstorm east of us in DM88!</a>, 19k jpeg
+</ul>
+
+<h2> Our Score </h2>
+<pre>
+Call Used: N3EUA
+Grid(s) Activated: DM78 DM89 DM88 DM79
+Entry Type: Rover
+
+ QSOs Pts/QSO QSO Pts Mult
+50 MHz 2 1 2 1
+144 MHz 31 1 31 8
+432 MHz 23 2 46 6
+1296 MHz 4 3 12 2
+
+Total
+All Bands 60 91 17
+
+GRIDS ACTIVATED 4 Rover Scoring Used
+
+N3EUA CLAIMED SCORE: 1911
+</pre>
+<hr>
+<address>
+<a href="http://www.gag.com/~bdale/">Bdale Garbee</A>,
+$Id: index.html,v 1.3 1999/04/13 20:00:36 bdale Exp $
+</address>
+</body>
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