[NLRS] June Contest: W0ZQ/R Report

[Jon Platt via NLRS]

Band  Q's Grids
50    62   22
144   51   12
222   31    7
432   40    9
902   24    3
1.2G  24    3
2.3G   7    1
3.4G   6    1
5.7G   7    1
10G   11    2
Tot  263   68   Score: 35,564

EN35:  35
EN25:  52
EN24:  32
EN34:  39
EN33:  35
EN43:  43
EN44:  27

Soapbox:  I had not run a full-blown rover operation for a little while, so when I packed up the Subaru Imprezza/R Friday night I thought that the back looks a little more roomy than usual.  My plan for Saturday was to run EN35, 25, 24, then return home, then EN33, 43, 44 and 34 on Sunday.  Sure enough, when I arrived at my first stop in EN35 on Saturday afternoon and went to set up my uW dishes I said to myself, "Where is the 10GHz tripod?".  Why, its back in my garage.  Hmmm.  Well, I had my 5.7 GHz dish/tripod. There is no way that I could hold the 10 GHz dish and make a contact, but I could hold the 5.7 GHz dish to make contacts.  A quick eyeball of the 5.7 GHz tripod showed that if I remove the camera mount at the top that the 10 GHz dish mount would indeed slide down over it.  With my limited tools I disassembled the 5.7 GHz dish/tripod mount and proceeded to work on the tripod.  However, despite my pounding the camera mount would not come off.  When roving I always bring a hack saw with me so the next step in engineering was to saw off the camera mount.  That worked; it was actually sort of rewarding. With the modifications made to the old 5.7 GHz tripod I was able to work W0GHZ, K0AWU, and KC0IYT/R on 10 GHz, and W0GHZ and KC0IYT/R on 5.7 GHz while arm holding the 5.7 GHz dish .... essentially 5.7 GHz handheld contacts.  Returning home Saturday night allowed me to pick up my real 10 GHz tripod for the Sunday run.  

Over the weekend contacts were made from EN08 (thanks Dennis) to EN22 to EN41 to EN53 on 2m and up.  6m was, well, sporadic.  All in all a very average June contest without any propagation of significance.  None the less, lots of fun to be out and about in the rover and the weather cooperated with no rain.  Thanks to the big guns who followed me around: W0UC, W0GHZ, N0AKC, and K0AWU, plus the many other stations who managed to pull my rover signal out of the noise.

73, Jon
W0ZQ/R