Greeting all
This was my first "real" roving experience. I went out solo last January but
I was very late getting started on Saturday afternoon. It was kind of a last
minute effort but it was fun. Because of that experience I decided to give
it another try but with two of us. Tim, WB9NJS and I got things setup for
the June contest. Due to a death in the family I was unable to go in June.
Things were looking much better for the September contest. On Friday Tim and
I headed out. After driving around 450 miles we stopped for the night.
Saturday morning found us about 40 miles from our starting point but the
last 8 miles or so were on Forest Service roads - NOT PAVED. Saturday
morning we started out but "Mr. Murphy" was waiting for us big time. About
one hour before starting time and 4 miles from our starting point Murphy
struck, the mast for the stacked 144 and 432 loops folded. Now what? That
was our main rover antennas system. Sure we had other antennas to use when
we were parked but in order to cover the area that we wanted, we had to be
able to operate on the run. Here we were out in the middle of the boonies
with a broken antenna mast. We had a 6-meter quad antenna that we were going
to setup when we were stopped. We used some of the fiberglass spreaders to
"splint" the broken mast. Well Sunday night and 950 miles later, found us at
the end of the contest, with several non-paved roads behind us, the splint
was still holding just fine.
We have not completely checked the logs yet but based on the
computer-logging program here are our results.
2003 ARRL September VHF QSO Party K7WWA
ROVER SF Section
Operators: K7WWA, WB9NJS
Band QSOs QSO pts. Mults.
--------------------------------------------
50 93 93 18
144 113 113 17
222 62 124 15
432 94 188 18
1296 50 150 12
--------------------------------------------
TOTALS 412 668 80 + 13 = 93
Claimed score = 62,124
We both had fun but it sure was a lot of driving :)
73
George k7wwa
Tim wb9njs
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