Well, I managed to get on 144 MHz in time for the 144 MHz Sprint. I
used my hardly ever used mobile rig in my pickup truck. It was an
IC-7100 DC to Daylight mobile rig with 50 watts output (I think) on 2M.
I mounted a horizontal omni antenna behind the cab and it is about 8 ft
off the ground. Quite the setup, and I am not that familiar with the
radio as it is rarely used. I had trouble figuring out how to make it
work on CW. Finding the magic menu entry was the problem. My plan was to
use a laptop for logging as I can't write legibly anymore due to tremors
in my right hand. Well the laptop battery was DED, and not enuf time to
recharge it, so I grabbed an old logbook and tried writing left handed.
My log looks like a 4 year old wrote it. Writing was very slow and I had
no good place for writing or placing the code key. I finally got a
system going, and adapted to the situation, but I noted that I worked
out the band awfully fast. There just were very few SSB or CW signals.
I could hear signals in New England, but the zero gain antenna that was
not on a mountain top was underwhelming at pulling in DX signals. I
missed many stations I am sure. From others on the band, I could tell
that W9KXI and WA3NUF were on, but I just did not hear anything from
them. I did manage to work N2NT, but it was a rough contact on CW. He
was not that strong here and I was only running 50 watts on CW. I
suspect the receive in the IC-7100 is not the greatest. I did manage to
work WW2Y/r in FN30. I am not sure, but I think he was on the Palisades
in NJ and there is a good takeoff to New England. We actually worked on
SSB.hat is a distance of about 230 miles, which ain't too bad for a
mobile station with an omni antenna. N2NT on CW was at 278 miles. I
did not have any provision for running FT8 from the truck, so I missed a
lot of activity there. By 9 PM I was beating a dead horse with no other
stations showing up. I folded up the tent and went home. I drove back to
the house through the woods, and worked my last station from FN42 in my
driveway. It was fun but also a bit frustrating. Not having the extra
10 to 15 dB of aluminum sure makes tropo scatter impossible.
Dave K1WHS
I ended up with 18 stations worked in ten grids.
On 4/15/2025 10:27 AM, Ron Klimas WZ1V wrote:
144 MHz Spring Sprint - 2025
Call: WZ1V
Operator(s): WZ1V
Station: WZ1V
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: FN31
Operating Time (hrs): 3.5
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 77 Mults = 24 Total Score = 1,848
Club: North East Weak Signal Group
Comments:
New twist allowing 2 Q's, but didn't do much to increase SSB-CW activity in my
opinion yet. By old metric I had 62 Q's. I only found 15 "extra" for a
second mode. 44 Q's were on SSB or CW, the rest on FT8.
I operated the first 90 minutes on SSB-CW until the activity there
dried up, then switched to FT8 occasionally going back to SSB. Took a half-hour
break for our local 1296 MHz activity night. No contacts over 400 miles other
than K3SK FM07 on FT8. I got the feeling a good number of ops weren't aware you
could QSO twice, so it will be interesting to see what evolves going forward.
Thanks for the QSOs.
73 Ron WZ1V
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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