I was a Rover in the southeast corner of Oregon to activate DN02, DN03,
DN12 and DN13. This was portable operation, two grids/day.
My "distance" band was 2 meters with 750 watts and 7 element yagi, since
this would probably be the only way to reach the distant metro centers in
Portland (330 mi), Seattle (420 mi) and California (400 miles). On other
bands, I brought only modest equipment and HTs from 50 to 1296 MHz.
We had no VHF band openings and participation within 200 miles was pretty
low. I only worked one station in Boise (100 mi). It's great that Steve
KE7IHG set up portable ops on Steens Mtn (80 mi). Thank goodness that Rod
WE7X was roving here too; he was a tremendous help scouting and
operating, and he made contacts from nearby grids. All my contacts except
15 QSOs were with WE7X/R.
My longest contacts were Nelson W7LUD (330 mi) and Fred WA7TZY (310 mi)
on 2m. It was fun to make 40-mile contacts across the lumpy rolling
desert on 902 and 1296 MHz using a low-power handy-talky.
A highlight of the trip was operating from Calamity Butte DN03ow at
6,700' for the last three hours of the contest, and then camping
overnight on the exposed ridge. The view is tremendous in all directions,
and even better from the 70' manned lookout. Eastern Oregon has suffered
greatly from this hot dry summer and I watched smoke rising from
wildfires about 20 miles to the north.
We had zero cellphone and internet service, practically speaking, for
four days in the remote Oregon desert. I'm glad I didn't plan on meteor
scatter ops because it would've been more difficult without internet
assistance. Ironically, the APRS coverage was pretty good out there.
My trip was eight days and 1,841 miles for driving and scouting the
Oregon desert to/from Seattle. I spent Tuesday before the contest to
activate CN92 from Hamaker Mountain near Klamath Falls. I'm very pleased
to report this journey let me finish activating all 22 grid squares in
Oregon, which has been a 3-year project. This was physically my most
demanding grid expedition of them all, and quite an adventure.
Barry K7BWH/R
Summary:
Class: Rover
Operating Time: 13.5 hours on the air, plus a buttload of
drive/setup/teardown time
Band QSOs Grids
----------------------
50: 12 6
144: 29 10
222: 9 5
432: 15 5
903: 13 5
1296: 9 5
Rover grids: 4
---------------------
Total: 87 40 Total score = 6,200
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