This was my second rover outing (previously did the July CQ WW VHF)
and fourth VHF contest (2010 & 2011 June VHF as part of K6ARP (CM95 in
'10 and DM07 in '11)).
It was pretty quiet on the western front. We didn't really hear
anything from Southern California until mid day Sunday. Not sure if it
was football or Hamcon. I drove roughly 750 miles through 10 grids. I
was hoping for a better result from our CM86 activation. Funny enough
we picked up CM86 from a local on 446.000 when he heard us grab a
couple of mobiles in CM96.
We left Fresno, CA a bit later (+/-0845 [1545]) in router to our first
planned grid square [CM98] near Baypoint, CA. We had just made it to
I-680 in Dublin [CM97] at 1100. We worked our way up the 680, CA-242 &
CA-4 through CM97, CM87 and finally to CM98. Our operating location
ended up being a high spot in a subdivision under construction (it was
a little higher than a local school we had looked at) with a great
view towards Sacramento. We made few contacts and decided to move over
to find a spot on a road with a view towards the south. After a few
more contacts it was on to CM88 (Crocket).
The route planner failed to see a gate on areal photos and we couldn't
make it to a ridge in CM87XT. We used the time to make up time on our
route to the south. After a stop at HRO Sunnyvale for a 220 vertical
and a late lunch we continued on to CM86. We had planned to use a
parking lot, but a local recommended another spot that turned out just
fine. I'm not sure anything would have helped our score from there
though. I had hoped to make contact with more stations in my home grid
of DM06. We worked until after sundown and headed back home for the
evening.
Sunday morning we started out towards the Madera Convergence (CM96/97
& DM06/07) at around 0900 local time. We worked a lot of the locals on
the way and a few further stations. It was a little more relaxed this
time around there during the CQ WW contest when we caught a 6M opening
to TX trying to get between the 4 grids as fast as possible. After the
convergence we headed up to Meadow Lakes and a vista point on CA-168
in DM07 looking for some distant stations. Southern CA started to show
up when we picked up DM14.
After heading down the hill we set out for the Kettleman City
Convergence and worked DM05 and CM95. We did pick up a friend who was
a rover on his way back from Hamcon as he went from DM04-DM06 from our
location in DM05 and picked him up in DM06 from CM95. Too bad he was
only running 2m. Our attempt at a good location in CM96 was thwarted
by Chevron's ownership of pretty much the entire area. We did settle
for a spot just west of I5. About 1800 we called it and headed back
picking up a few stations on the way back.
A per contact cost came in around 90 cents in fuel.
Most contacted station: W6TV in DM06 with 25 contacts.
A few pics of our outing are located here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/blackandredwarrior/2011SeptemberARRLVHFContest?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Results for K6BRW/R (K6BRW & AE6GE)
RoverLog QSOs by Activated Grid:
Grid QSOs Grid QSOs Grid QSOs
DM07 27 CM88 10 CM97 40
CM98 14 CM95 10 DM05 14
CM86 20 CM96 16 DM06 28
CM87 11
RoverLog Score Summary, Using new rules:
Band QSOs Value QSOPts Mults
50 36 1 36 10
144 102 1 102 14
222 16 2 32 5
432 36 2 72 10
Grids activated: 10
Totals: 190 242 49
Claimed Score: 11858
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