[NLRS] Contest almost a bust, but not quite

[David Palm]

Like W0ZQ and some others, I had a very full Saturday of chores.  But I did
take a break just after the contest started to pull the pieces of the rover
stack out the garage and looked at assembling it in the yard.  I hauled the
FT-897 and power supply out, along with a bunch of jumpers and such.  The
goal was to get 6m and 2m going right away, then try to move up to 222 and
432.

It turned out for starters that my 2 meter rover antenna is not on the
premises any more.  I must have loaned that out.....WV9E perhaps?  I'll
have to check.  Oh well, I decided to fall back to a smaller 2 meter yagi
that I had built but not really tuned up.

Let's try 6 meters.  After some horsing around getting everything assembled
and hooked up I hoisted the 6 meter shortened coax dipole and keyed up,
only to find seriously high SWR.  Something was wrong with that.  Tried the
small 2 meter yagi next.  Same deal--seriously high SWR.  This all took
longer to do than to tell about, so by this time I'm needing to move back
to other things.  So I put it all back in the house/garage and waved off.

Didn't get back to the radio until Sunday.  Antenna situation is terrible
from the shack as well.  6 meters is down.  432 is pathetic.  I tried
calling CQ for a stretch on the 2 meter halo but didn't get any takers.
Finally I did hear and work a few folks as I was going past the shack while
doing other things.  Tried calling CQ for a few more stretches but never
really had any more success.

It wasn't a very satisfying contest, but it gave me a more realistic
picture of how far things have gone down here and what is needed to bring
them back.

Still, I'm very seriously targeting a rove for August and am set up for at
least 3 bands for that effort, so I'm looking forward to trying to drum up
activity for that venture.

Thanks to all who participated, especially to the rovers and the
grid-expeditioners.  Great stuff and very inspiring for those of us who are
trying to get back into the game.

73,

David  W9HQ