Yes, it's the family rovers once again. The "Rovairs Extraordinaires" will
be out among 'em this weekend. Our final plan is set. Once again, work gets in
the way of contesting. A client meeting Friday well keep us from prepping
the rovermobile until Friday night, so we won't be able to leave until Saturday
morning, so we won't be able to get too far afield from our EN61 QTH.
For all practical purposes, we are taking a lap of northern Illinois. We
will hit 11 grids on 6-1296. We have good power and beams on 2, 222, and 432.
We have 100 watts and a loop for 6 and 10 watts on 900 and 1296. For the upper
bands, we have a yagi and a looper respectively.
Here we go. If you are looking at a map of Illinois, we'll be covering the
area north of Springfield. We'll start at 1800Z near Kankakee at the four
corners of EN60/50/51/61. We will spend 2 hours there. We have routinely made
350 to 400 mile QSOs from that spot.
At 2000Z we will leave that area and drive to the Champaign Urbana area,
operating as we go through EN50 and EN60. Our direction of travel will be SSW.
Our beams will be pointing that direction. When we get near Champaign Urbana,
we'll drop down to Homer (DOH!) IL. That's EM69. The time should be about
2130 when we arrive. We plan to be there 45 minutes. It's a good spot across
Indiana, into Ohio. We have also reached Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri,
Wisconsin and Iowa from there.
It will take us 15 minutes to travel from Homer (DOH!) to Sidney where we
will drop into EM59. This is a short stop for us. We only plan 15 minutes,
from
2230 to 2245. We will be concentrating on the northern half of the compass
because we will spend the next three hours (to about 0145Z Sunday) crossing
EM59. There will be lots of interstate travel and we will cut right through
Springfield on our way to Beardstown. This is just about at the EM49, EN40
line.
Look for us in EM49 from about 0230Z to 0300Z. We'll check into a motel, and
spend a few minutes in EN40 before calling it quits for the night.
Sunday morning (local) we're back on the road at 1500Z in EN40. We'll be
heading north, (hello Wisconsin, Minnesota, eastern Iowa and northern Illinois)
through EN40. We'll make EN41 at about 1715Z, taking about 30 minutes to spin
around, catching as many as possible before pointing north again and heading
for EN42 near Mt. Carroll, Illinois in the NW part of the state.
We have a favorite high spot in EN42. It's near Galena, Illinois on top of a
ridge line. We do well here into Chicagoland, all over Wisconsin, Michigan,
Iowa, Minnesota and once in a while, Ontario. EN42 hasn't been real active
lately. This may be your chance, although I hope we aren't your only chance.
We will be at the eastern edge of the grid at this time and at about 2145Z
we'll absquatchulate into EN52. We're there for about 2 hours and 30 minutes
as
we boogey on into the Chicago area.
At 0100Z we should be atop Nichol Knoll, a Mt. Trashmore high spot on the SW
corner of EN62. We should do well from here, so we hope that we can work you.
In the last frenzied 30 minutes we'll drop into EN51 and EN61 and home.
This is about a 600 mile itinerary that we are pretty familiar with. We will
do our best to stay on time. The run frequency on 2 meters is 144.170. The
voice keyer will be pumping away there and on 6 at 50.170. Our other bands
will be set at 222.070, 432.070, 903.100 and 1296.100. If you catch us on the
run, it isn't always easy for us to QSY...we appreciate your help. We will go
to 144.200 from time to time to make some noise and ask people to QSY. We
will have 146.470, 223.500 and 446.000 FM in memory so we can punch up FM if
you'd like. 146.470 will be monitored all the time.
Please remember that you get to work both us of us under the rules, so
standby for whomever you didn't get to work. We're pretty good at passing the
mic
back and forth!
Thanks for reading this long message. See you on the weekend!
73, Tim K0PG and Pat
K9ILT/R
"The Lloyd and Iris
of VHF Roving"
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