[NLRS] KC0IYT/R August UHF

[Glen Overby]

I'm tired!  I hate corn.  And it has nothing to do with corn as a food!  It's
just that it blocks radio signals, and eats model rockets whole.  Two hobbies
with a common enemy :-)

Here's my results:

RoverLog QSOs by Activated Grid:
Grid	QSOs	Grid	QSOs	Grid	QSOs
EN23	21	EN33	28	EN24	11
EN43	2	EN25	38	EN34	27
EN35	13	

RoverLog Score Summary, Using new rover rules:
Band	QSOs	Value	QSOPts	Mults
222	43	3	129	11
432	42	3	126	11
903	14	6	84	3
1.2	17	6	102	4
2.3	11	12	132	3
3.4	11	12	132	3
5.7	0	12	0	0
10	2	12	24	2

Grids activated: 		7

Totals:	140		729	44	

Claimed Score: 32076

I again failed to work 4 out of the 7 grids that I activated on 222.  3/7 on
432, 6/7 on 902 and up.

The contest was hours of tuning and calling, interrupted by minutes of
adrenelin-fed activity.  I've heard many say that activity breeds activity,
and it seems that stations calling or answering my CQs arrived in packs --
packs that are well spaced out across the horizon.  One of the things I hate
the most is having to decide who to point at and work first.  I like to be
fair, but I know I've favored those who were in unique-to-me grids, and those
who have lots of bands.  I had frequent calls on BOTH bands - if you heard me
reply with just a "wait" or something of the sorts, it was because I was in
the middle of a contact on another band.

One of the most frustrating things about roving is being told "I looked for
you several times but you weren't there".  Turning away 'customers' is a bad
thing, so I tried figuring out why.  In June my guess was the antennas were
all very directional and I wasn't hearing off the sides.  So, I wanted to try
an ominidirectional antenna to see how that would work.  I borrowed a pair of
stacked loops for 222 from Jon, W0ZQ, and mounted them to the car roof rack
just below the level where the microwave loopers are.  I _think_ this worked
out well.  From winsted to the twin cities, most stations were two S-units
down compared to the 7el beam.  I seemed to hear more stations calling me, but
they weren't always able to hear me respond.  I think KB9TLV the most frequent
station in that category: I heard him calling many times, but he didn't hear
my replies.  I had trouble getting W0ZQ's attention, as well, even though I
could hear him.  K0MHC, on the other hand, seemed able to hear me from a grid
or two away, no matter which way my beams were pointed!

Another frustrating choice:  sit and call vs hunt and pounce?  I picked up a
lot of grids on 222 & 432 from K0MHC, because I went hunting for him.  I even
got to work my own grid once :-) But I keep wondering how many folks I missed
by being off my expected frequeny?  I did, however, try to keep one radio
parked on {222,432}.120 all the time.

"Which band was that?"  I usually had radios listening on 222 and 432, and I
wasn't always able to tell which radio the call came from!  I missed KM0T in
at least two grids because he didn't hear my reply, or I replied on the wrong
rig.  The funniest call of all was N0KP: his call was "N0KP on 432" so I knew
which microphone I was supposed to grab :-) I must have replied to him on the
'other' band at least once.

I know many on thist list have expressed frustration with rovers not sticking
around for others to "tail end" contacts when running bands.  I know that I
didn't do that well in this contest.  It seemed like I always got tail-end
calls from stations 90 - 180 degrees off the station I was QSYing with.


So, here is what happened on my expedition:

I started Saturday out by loading a tripod with all the antennas on the car.
I've apparently gotten good at this since it took less than an hour to have
everything on top and ready to travel!  I'm not sure the attention from my
neighbors is a good thing, but I haven't gotten any complaints yet.

I arrived in the Winsted area early.  I planned to start the contest from
EN34, because thats not as rare of a grid as others and I know how busy the
start of the contest is.  I arrived on Yale Avenue and MH Highway 7 to find
both sides of the street lined with corn.  Yuck!  As I drove North, I found an
open spot but with trees on the horizon.  I thought it would be fine so I
drove north to search for a site in EN35.  I didn't find one on that trip.

I was flagged down by some reporter who wanted to know what was going on.  I
think he was more of a fire engine chaster and really wanted me to take him to
the disaster.  On my way back to the Yale Ave. site, I passed up what was
probably a better site at Yale and Cty 6.

The contest start was very slow.  My location (and, as it turned out, not
connecting coax) prevented me from working anything above 902mhz.  I only
worked four stations from EN34 at the start; I ended up back in EN34 at the
end of the contest.

My next grid was EN24, south of Winsted.  I did well from this location in
June, but it was overgrown with corn.  On the west end of the road the field
to the south was beans, not corn.  I could have at least had a decent
take-off.  I didn't go that far down the road because there were power lines
at the west end.

Around this time, my 1296 transverter started giving me problems.  It would
give me S7 noise and I discovered that it was fairly warm.  I had brought one
4" fan along and moved it from sitting on the 222 heatsink to 1296.  That
seemed to fix the problem most of the time.  But, it turns out, heat was
probably not the problem.

It was hot in the car -- mid to upper 90F and by the time I was done in EN24,
I had drank almost all of the water I brought along.  On my way to find an
EN35 site, I stopped at Subway in Winsted.

I drove around a while and picked a spot overlooking a bean field between
Howard Lake and Waverly, south of 12.  Now, up to this point I hadn't made a
single contact on 2304 or 3456.  Nobody had heard me, and I hadn't heard them.
I was wondering if I got the transverters connected to the right antennas so I
leaned over the passenger seat to check.  The cables were not connected.

oops!

I worked 4 stations from that grid, then a neighbor came by asking what I was
doing.  After explaining, he angrily said that I was messing up his TV
reception and demanded that I leave.  I asked what channel and he sad "all of
them".  Lousy TV.  I decided not to argue, so I finished the contact and moved
on to find a new spot.  I ended up just going to my EN25 location early and
hunted for other rovers.

>From EN25, I ran the bands thru 3456 with K0MHC in EN15 for the first time.  I
wasn't able to work Gary, w0ghz, on 10ghz from this site.  I was parked next
to a cell tower and all paths to him were through the fence.  Allthough there
were boring times in EN25, it was one of my better grids.

On my way to EN23, I ran into road reconstruction west of Belle Plaine.  Yes,
reconstruction: there were place where the road was just gravel.  I ended up
making my own detour (there wasn't a labeled one as far as I could tell) to a
road labeled "Scenic Drive" or something like that.  I wasn't much into
scenery at this time: it was dark, and I was falling behind schedule.

I arrived in Beauford at least 45 minutes late.  It's hard to search for
operating sites in the dark.  I thought I'd just drive until I found the
marker in my GPS for site I used in June, but there was no marker.  I'm pretty
sure that my EN23 site was along the same road I used in June, but in a better
spot.  There is a road further south that supposedly has better views, but
there were lights from residences on that road.  I decided to go with the more
isolated road and not sit in near the front of someone's house at 2am.  The
spot I chose didn't have much space on the road and I was concerned about
getting hit.  My flashers created too much RF hash so I went with just the
running lights.

During the drive south, I noticed that my 1296 transverter was again putting
out S8 level noise.  The noise was gone when I first found Dave, N0KP, but
when trying to peak on his signal, the noise returned and obscured his signal.
The transverter temp was near air temp, in the low 80s so heat couldn't be the
problem, could it?  I discovered that I had "birdies" as I moved the antenna
back and forth...  S8 birdies ten miles from the nearest town?  These
"birdies" changed location as as I moved the antennas.  HUH?  I reached up and
flexed the cables around the tripod some and the noise went away!  Bad coax.
This was LMR-400 Ultraflex - not some cheap cable, so I wasn't expecting
problems.  902 was also starting to have the same problem but didn't seem as
easy to fix.  Some of you were probably puzzled by what I was talking about
when I went to flex cables so I could hear you on 1296.

902 started drifting when I transmitted.  From testing last week, I know that
when I vary the input voltage, the frequency drifts.

About 2:30am I worked N0HJZ and was told that only one op was awake :-) (I
didn't recognise the voice so I don't know who it was).

I didn't mind the time beaconing on 10ghz, as I stood outside the car and
realised how few constillations I can remember well enough to identify.

I left about on schedule and headed east.  Mike, KM0T, found me when mobile
and I worked the only two while-mobile contacts of the contest.  I logged them
to a tape recorder, but I thought the wind made it hard to hear so I relogged
on paper.  Mike wanted to work me for EN34 so I found a road construction site
to stop at.  I waited there, calling occasionally, and munching on mixed nuts
(at the time it sure seemed appropriate :-) I continued on but was VERY tired.
I decided to stop and sleep in Owatonna.  But where?  I found a Wallmart with
some RVs camped in the parking lot, so I pulled up near them and slept for a
while.  I awoke just before sunrise, feeling more like I wanted to go back to
sleep than to drive on.  The sleep DID help alot, I just wasn't feeling like
it.

I made it to my EN33 site about 2 hours late, having written off working from
EN44.  I heard a few people call me while enroute, but only W0GHZ heard my
replies.  I let Gary know what my schedule was looking like.  I worked a lot
of stations from EN33, but was (again) having reports of distortion on 902 and
I was drifting a lot on transmit.  I had tested 902mhz with W0ZQ before the
contest, and the signals were fine.  During that test, I varied the power
supply voltage, and my LO drifted.  I suspected that I had a coax problem
there as well because I would see the same S7+ level noise as on 1296.  I
watched the voltage display on my FT-817 during one transmission, and it
dropped into the 12v range.  Normally, with the car running, it's about 14.1v.

This was a sign that my alternator was not holding out as well as it was
earlier.  I made some of you wait for me to look under the hood and re-check
voltages with a DVM on the battery.  Yes, I had low voltage.  It was above the
battery voltage and I revved the engine once and the voltage went up, so I
knew the alternator wasn't dead.  I had a low alternator voltage (and current)
problem on this car a few years ago (before I had radios in it), so I was
pretty sure I could run on what I had.  I Dave, N0KP, what was going on and he
told me to just get out of there.  I was tired and wasn't analizing things
well so I sort of paniced and shut everything down.  I'm sorry to the folks on
frequency at that time (at least 3 of you) but I was spooked and worried.

I decided to switch all the radios over to the marine battery in my trunk,
thinking that I could eek out a few contacts from EN43 that way.  While doing
this, I discovered that my headlights were on.  After turning them off, the
car voltage went back up to 14.1v.  I did some experimenting with keying
radios off the car and became much less worried about my situation, but still
didn't want to get stuck in the boonies.  On the drive home, the alternator
was putting out it's usual 14.4v and everyuthing seemed normal; however the
voltage at low speed or idle is definately lower now.

>From EN43, I only worked K9CVC on 222 and 432.  I was hoping to give out EN43
for the few stations that I thought would have a chance at records, but never
heard from anyone.

Once I was near home, I decided to activate EN34 again.  I was walking
distance from home, so I figured that was my worst case.  I finally worked
W0ZQ, also in in EN34.  The end-of-contest battle was fast and furious:  with
less than 5 minutes to go, I ran the bands thru 3456 with W0GHZ in something
like 2 or 3 minutes.

I'm not comfortable with how the antennas ride on the car.  Everything seems a
bit too shakey, and the wind load seems to be pretty high.  I'm going to be
rethinking my roving setup for future contests.

Glen, kc0iyt