[NLRS] 2011 Jan VHF KF0Q rover

[kf0q at hbci.com]

The last time I was semi serious about roving for the January contest  
it was 2002.  I can't believe it's been nine years.  I had no idea  
whatsoever to operate this year either but kept thinking about it.   
Roving in January has never really been fun but time does help to heal  
those wounds.  I thought a simple plan and a few grids would be doable  
so by Saturday morning I canceled my snowmobile trip and I decided to  
give the contest a try.  Within a couple of hours I had gathered up  
all of my bricks, cables, feedlines and whatnot needed for the four  
bands staged it all in the shack and connected DC power cables and  
coax jumpers. Next I spent a few minutes adding a couple of jumper  
wires inside the 222 xverter needed to hard key the brick which  
admittedly should have been done at least ten years ago?

I had no real goal this year other than to have some fun hand out a  
few contacts with a simple setup. No strategy other than make some  
noise and hope everything worked reasonably okay.  While the setup was  
fairly simple with one ?706mkIIg it did add a layer of complexity as I  
needed coax switches for 50 and 28Mhz and one for 144 and 432.

My mast was a simple aluminum conduit clamped to the corner of my  
pickup box with no rotator three short yagis, and the moxon for six on  
top. For power I grabbed the group 27 solar battery from the boat  
bolted on the 120A Anderson connector and was good to go.

The only problems I had were wrestling the stiff feedlines in the cold  
and replacing the 144 antenna right away due to high swr apparently  
from a feedpoint problem.  My sony notebook loaded with roverlog was  
not stable for some reason so logging was handled with a clipboard and  
pencil?


50    18 x 6
144   46 x 9
222   16 x 6
432   26 x 5

Score  106 x 43 = 4,440

Grids activated EN43,44,33,34

My trips were short and there was no problem with roads although it  
was a bit cold at minus nine heading back home sat night.  Only one  
drive by surveillance vehicle during the weekend while parked in EN34?

I was amazed with all of the activity in EN43.  I can remember times  
where I was one of maybe a couple folks on in the grid during a contest.

Signals on 144 and 222 were quite good but six was generally pretty  
tough both days almost brutal.  432 seemed tough but then I worked  
some stations running barefoot with not the biggest antenna either  
which was a pleasant surprise.

It was nice to hear everyone again.


73,
Matt
KF0Q/R