[NLRS] MN QSO Party VHF NLRS assault?

[goverby@charter.net]

"Bruce Richardson" <w9fz@w9fz.com>
> Can someone check the rules?  http://www.w0aa.org/ ... follow the link to
> MNQSOParty.

| QSO Rules: MN stations work everyone, all other W/VE & DX work MN stations.
| Work stations once per band & mode. MN mobiles may be worked once per band &
| mode from each county, & MN mobiles may work stations once per band & mode
| from each county.

that looks good.

| Bands/Modes: HF classes: 160m-10m (excluding WARC bands), CW/RTTY/SSB only.
| VHF Classes: 6M and above, CW/FM/SSB only (no repeater QSOs).

I can only assume "and above" means all the way to light.  Perhaps it would be
a good idea to check with them just to avoid having contacts thrown out.  It
would also be nice if they would list "where to find us" frequencies for at
least 6m & 2m.

> I wouldn't operate for as long in each county as I do in each grid, but then
> again, there wouldn't be as many guys to work. I'd work who was there and
> then move on.  I don't tend to operate on the fly, but I could just find
> places to pull over and point at the cities or the rest of the state.
> That's another benefit, there wouldn't be many out of state operators to
> point for on VFH.  Could be a few and the Q's would be welcome--time will
> tell.

I wasn't very successful at finding places to pull over to this past weekend.
It seemed like the good hills had houses on them, and I wasn't comfortable
with parking in someone's driveway and pointing antennas at their house.
Operating locations were my big problem this weekend.

> Are there any other rovers that would keep their rovermobiles glued
> together?

I took the gear off my car before the contest was over.  There are major
changes I need to make to the antenna mounting before doing this again.  I
wasn't compfortable with taking my antenna farm up to interstate highway
speeds.  This was the main reason that I dropped going to WI on Sunday,
allthough I regret not heading south.

I would consider redoing this for MNQSOP.  I learned a lot, and I think it
would be useful to build on that.  That is, if people are willing to bear with
me on another "learning experience" :-)

I'm curious how you set up your antennas, and what they consist of.  I've seen
pictures of a couple of truck-based rovers, but not cars.

I used my honda civic with an improvised roof rack tied down to the front and
back of the vehicle.  From the rack, I had a 4' vertical fiberglass mast
holding the antennas; the mast is guyed from the top to the rack corners.  I
ended up with relatively small antennas: I never used the 6M beam (extending
elements is a hassle), my 7e 2m beam broke elements and I switched to a 3e
beam, and I got cold feet about taking the 22e 70cm beam on the road and
instead took an 11e 70cm beam.

Glen, KC0IYT