[NLRS] KC0IYT - 10 gig contest comments

[goverby at charter.net]

This is a report from part of the Engergizer Bunny Tracking Team :-)

For the second weekend:

			Locations	Contacts	
	Saturday	12		 84
	Sunday		 8		 18
					102

It was a fun time for both Bruce and I, even when the success rate was down.

Pictures:

  http://reality.sgiweb.org/overby/ham/2004-10Gig/pictures.html  

  Permission granted to NLRS and it's members to use these pictures.

I plan to do a nice web page style writeup of the expiditions with pictures
and maps.  For now, just the pictures will do.

We started the contest in West Fargo near the sewage lagoons.  We followed
gravel roads to our second stop south of Argusville, but then found a state
highway paralleling I29 and followed it north for several stops.  Two stops
south of Grand Forks, we decided not to take I29, hoping to squeeze in more
stops, and ended up on gravel roads.  This slowed us down quite a bit.  Near
Grand Forks we found a flood dike being built which provided us with high
ground (10' HAAT) to operate from.  After a late lunch, we worked some more
sites from Hwy 81, but soon hit I29 northbound and covered a lot more ground.
What turned out to be our last site of the day started with excellent signals
and I was wondering how many more stops we could fit in.  Unfortunately, the
band came crashing down during the contacts with Sisseton.  We found Barry
from this site for the first time!  Barry's signal was loud enough for me to
copy on SSB, so we worked cross-mode with me sending poor CW.  This was neat
for me since it was my first international contact!

Wally offered to put us up for the night, but we decided to turn him down.
Wally lives just north of Grand Forks and we felt that it would be unlikely
that we'd drive back north to start Sunday out.  I really wanted to try
working the long distances and Bruce agreed.  We spent the night in Cavalier.

Sunday morning came early and we found a first operating site north-west of
Cavalier ahead of schedule.  Contacts with Bill & Wally were easy, and once we
got pointed at Barry it was fairly easy.  We worked two other sites on our way
West towards Langdon.

On the way we stopped to look at the Perimeter Acquisistion Radar (PAR)
Complex that was part of the US ABM system (see www.srmsc.org).  This radar is
still active, but I didn't notice any QRM from it.  We also drove by a
now-decommissioned ICBM command center and an unknown Space Command site (I
believe it's part of the ABM system).

At Langdon we picked up lunch and headed south on ND 1.  We set up a few
thousand feet south-east of the ABM Missile Site (MSR) Complex.  I should have
tried listening for signals on pyramid bounce!  After the lack of success with
Sisseton, we took a long drive to the south end of EN08 and set up near a
decommissioned missile silo.  Wally and Bill had gone home for the day, so we
made no contacts from there.

That motivated us to head back down into the valley.  We got back to the Grand
Forks dike site about 3:30 and worked one round of contacts with Sisseton.  We
headed for Fargo with a 30-40mph headwind and a 75mph speed limit.  It was
over 90F at that time!  Was this really September?  Neither of our vehicles
were doing well bucking the wind so we drove it at 70-75mph.  Bruce got a
phone call and we tried working a twin cities group from ~20 miles north of
Fargo, without success.  While there, we made one last contact with Barry.
Or, rather, Bruce made a contact but I apparently wasn't peaked well enough
because Barry didn't hear any of my CW.

We stopped in Fargo for gas (I was close to running on vapors) and headed for
Monticello.  We had been ragchewing on 146.46 FM, but just after supper in
Alexandria, we switched to SSB to see if we could raise some folks in the twin
cities.  Nobody was listening on 260 but since it was 9pm, we tuned to Matt's
2M net.  Apparently there was no net going on so we chatted with several folks
in and near the twin cities and I was impressed with how many people were able
to pick me up running 50W (barefoot IC706) into a 3E beam.

At Monticello we worked Gary, W0GHZ for a unique.  Our last contact of the
contest was Lenny, K0SHF, who we woke up for the unique call from 2km away
from his house!  I was parked at home 2 minutes to midnight.

It was great to have Bill and Wally on.  For us, it ment that wherever we
stopped, we were guaranteed two Qs.  Thanks!

Bruce gave me a great tour of some good cold war artifacts!

The wind was miserable.  I was afraid of it tipping over my dish.  There were
only a couple of contacts where I was comfortable with it because I was able
to prop the tripod up against my car.  Yes, I've done the "wide spread" mod to
the tripod.

I wrapped the transverter in foam Saturday, and bubble-wrap Sunday hoping to
keep wind off it to LO keep drift down.  I also kept it powered on while
moving.  It never seemed like we worked others on exactly the same frequency,
and I'm still not sure exactly where .100 is.

I had power problems.  At most of the stops, I left the 55AH marine battery in
the trunk and fed the dish with 25' of 12GA wire.  While it would have made a
great tripod weight, it would be extra set-up time and I'd be even more
exhausted by the end of the trip.  I think had a voltage drop due to the long
power cable, and it didn't get significanly better when I switched to power
from the car battery.  I'll be building some shorter cables from 10ga wire
very soon!  If anyone has a local source of 10ga zip cord, I'm interested.

Keeping the transverter on the whole day may have contributed to the power
drain.  On Sunday I plugged in vehicle power and disconnected the battery
while moving until the Grand Forks stop where I noticed that the transverter
had gotten pretty warm.

I know we worked new grids for Wally and Barry; I'll send QSL cards for those
grids.  Anyone else who wants QSL cards for contest contacts, let me know.

Glen, KC0IYT (/R)