[NLRS] W9FZ considering roving... (long)

[John P. Toscano]

Bruce Richardson wrote:
 
> While the barriers to my actually going out are still significant.
> (Vehicle and power source)  I'm toying with the idea.  I was gonna
> go make sure the 15/16/25/26/35/36 was covered, but if JT will do
> that, then maybe I'd better shift east to either the 36/46 line or
> the 46/56 line.  JT has good coverage up through 2304.  If I did go
> west to 15/16, I'd take 10G with me and hope for Q's with Mike or
> Gene.

Ok, I guess it's time to "(defecate) or get off the pot", especially
since my "waffling" may impair other people's planning.

Barring unforesen events, I will go out roving in January.  After
taking a long hard look at the maps, and talking some more with
John (KC0LBT), I am going to scale back my plans a bit, however.

Saturday I will start out at the EN33/34/43/44 corner, down near
Rochester and Winona.  This is "familiar territory" for me, quite a
bit closer to the metro area than Elbow Lake, but far enough out to
offer some grids that might be unique on at least some of the bands.
And also close enough to John and Jon to work them from/in a few grids
as they cruise north from Iowa.

Sunday, I will tag along with John and Jon, and we plan to activate
EN36,35,25,24.  So that would be a total of 8 grids for me if I
manage to work in all of them.

Bill (K0AWU), I hope to work you on all the bands you have running
from at least EN36 (we'll be near Hinckley, so just a short ways
north of the EN35/36 dividing line), and I'll be happy to try from
the other grids as well.  I'd hate for you to feel left out up there
in EN37, and I want to make sure that you get some reward for having
both 1296 and 222 available.  And don't worry, I won't be running
an omni on 1296.  It will be a 12-foot long loop yagi rated at
about 20 dBi, and I will be trying to push 30-40 watts into it.  I
hope to be loud.

Bruce, that means that we will leave EN15/16/26 untouched, so you
would be welcome to operate as you originally suggested, but also
means that EN46/56 will be wide open from what I know now.  I sure
hope that you can pull together what you need to make a trip out.

Jon (W0ZQ), Mike (KM0T), Gene (N0DQS) and the rest of you, I'll be
looking for you guys, I hope you'll be looking for us.

I will try to put up a web page on the NLRS site announcing the
rover schedules as I hear of them, but naturally they will not be
updated once the contest starts (won't be like an illegal "spotting
net" or anything like that).  I'll email the list if/when I get it
going.  And I will try to summarize any drastic schedule changes that
I hear about by email to the list for the benefit of those that have
email without full internet browsing ability (yeah, there really
ARE some folks in our group in that category).

So what I know for now is culled just from this reflector and presented
below.  The table will only make sense with a FIXED-WIDTH FONT like
Courier, etc.)

====================================================================
Rover Call      KC0LBT        W0AMT         W0JT          N0DQS
-----------  ------------  -----------  ------------  --------------
Operator         John         Jon           John          Gene
-----------  ------------  -----------  ------------  --------------
Bands            ABCD         ABCDE        ABCD9EF      ABCD9EFGHI
-----------  ------------  -----------  ------------  --------------
Saturday     21,22,31,32,  21,22,31,32     43,44,     20,30,22,21,
             33,34,35      33,34,35        33,34      32,31,23,33
-----------  ------------  -----------  ------------  --------------
Sunday       36,35,25,24   36,35,25,24   36,35,25,24  34,24,13,14,04
                                                      03,02,12,01,11
====================================================================

If I got any of the rover info wrong, please shout about it here.

On a related topic:

I had a long talk with Mike Stahl at M-Squared.  We started on the
subject of a reasonable compromise 6M antenna, and got into a lot of
other stuff.

Based on that discussion, more revisions to my antenna setup will be
made.  The loop yagis for 902-2304 are going to hang down below the
cross-boom assembly, putting them closest to the van roof, and the 222
and 432 antennas are going above the cross-boom assembly, getting them
higher above ground.  The cross booms will be moved closer together,
and the vertical masts will be lengthened from 2' to 3', so that
those 5 antennas will all be at least a foot away from the cross
booms.  There will be three vertical masts instead of 2, since I
won't be putting a loop yagi on the main mast that goes into the
rotator ahd holds the crossbooms.  I'm going to change the mast from
my current six feet of 2" OD round aluminum to three nested six-foot
sections of that square steel perforated stock that many of you have
seen on K0MHC's rover setup.  The 6M antenna will mount to the
innermost piece, the 2M antenna will mount to the middle piece, and
the cross boom assembly and thrust bearing will mount to the outermost
piece.  In motion, the two inner sections will be collapsed so that
the 6M antenna is only a few inches above the 2M antenna, which is only
a few inches above the 222 & 432 antennas.  I will not attempt to
operate while I drive, since I have no partner, and the radios are
in the back of the van away from the driver.  When I reach each site
I plan to work, I will push up the two nested sections, putting the
6M antenna 6+5+5=16 feet above the van roof, or about 22 feet above
the earth.  The 2M antenna will end up 6+5=11 feet above the roof, or
about 17 feet above the earth.  This allows 1 foot of overlap on each
of the nested sections for stability.  If it seems too wimpy once it
is all put together and pushed up, I can push them up a shorter
distance and still be much better off than I was in September.

Mike suggested that I eventually dump the long loop yagis for roving,
and instead use a stacked array of much shorter antennas per microwave
band.  This would give a much wider azimuth beamwidth to make the
pointing less critical, squash the elevation beamwidth closer to the
horizon to get back the gain lost by using shorter antennas, and
increase the capture area in the vertical plane which should help
reduce fading.  They'd all be rear-mounted instead of center mounted
which would also help to minimize interactions with the pattern and
impedance.  He says that for his home station, he stacked EIGHT of
the 23CM22EZ antennas, but of course that would take about 12+ feet
of vertical space which wouldn't be possible for most rover setups
and would cost a whole lot more money than I want to sink into new
antennas for the near future.  Stacks of 4 could be made to fit the
space, but would not necessarily fit my budget either.  I guess that's
one of the perks of being the head engineer at a big antenna company...

The funny thing about the whole conversation is that I was asking him
for advice on the design of a 4-element 6M beam, and he insisted that
the 6M5X is not too big an antenna to take out roving, that I should
just re-use that but get it higher above the ground.  "It's not a
heavy antenna, it's only 9 lbs.  You can lift that into place one
handed!"  Spoken like a hard-core DXpeditioner whose erected EME arrays
and large HF antenna farms in far-flung corners of the world that he is.
We'll see about that.

Oh well, enough chatter from me for now.  I guess I have plenty of
work to do to be ready in time.

73 de W0JT/r