[NLRS] Rover logging requirements

[John P. Toscano]

Gary Danelius wrote:

> My operations in EN35 were not in the Rover class, but in the
> Low Power Portable class. I was on the air from home to hand
> out points. I will not be sending in a log for my EN34 contacts.

>From http://www.arrl.org/contests/announcements/rules-vhf.html rule
1.2 says:

  Individuals and stations are limited to one entry per contest.

This seems to imply that you MUST pick one location or the other
for entering, though it doesn't seem to exclude the operation from
two locations as you describe.
 
> Lenny, K0SHF, and Mike, KB0OZN, stopped by to work me and
> also operated from home. They should be able to send in a rover
> entry according to the rules. I am trying to help them get the
> entry correct.
> 
> What are the logging requirements for a rover? Do they need to have
> a separate log for each grid or can they use one log sheet and
> enter the grid they are operating  from in the grid sent column?

>From http://www.arrl.org/contests/announcements/rules-vhf.html rule
2.3.6 states something which seems to supercede rule 1.2 quoted
above, and is pertinent to this question:

  Rover operators may submit separate logs for single operator (fixed
  station) in addition to their rover entries. Rovers submitting a
  score for inclusion in a club competition must also include a
  secondary summary sheet indicating the portion of the score which
  counts for the club score if any of the QSOs submitted take place
  outside of their club's territory. 

I trust that these roves all stayed well within NLRS territory, so
they only need to submit one log for their fixed-station activity
and one log for the rover activity.

If you recall, the log sheet has a column for both halves of the
exchange, i.e. both the grid I send ("my" location) and the
grid I work ("his" location).  From a fixed station, we get
complacent because the sent grid is always the same, and we stop
thinking about it.  But the rover log works the same way, just that
the sent grid changes as you move around.

There are a few tricks to know about rover logging, at least with
the fairly popular VHF-DX program.
  1) Create a separate log file for the fixed station log and the
     rover station log.
  2) In the rover station log file, be sure to specify in the
     setup area that you are a rover.  Otherwise there will be
     problems with the logging and scoring.
  3) By the rules, you must ACTIVATE at least 2 grids to be a
     rover station.  And your grid multiplier is the total of all
     the grids you worked into, PLUS the number of grids you activated.
     VHF-DX knows to do this if you set up the log file correctly as
     a rover entry.

And whether or not you do the two-entry thing, another caveat with
VHF-DX is that if you ever WORK a rover, it is critical that you
enter their callsign with /R on the end.  This is a special flag to
VHF-DX that tells the program that the station is a rover, and that
therefore it may show up on the same band several times from different
grids and not be an error.

73 de KB�ZEV