[NLRS] Sheepish/embarrassed story about CQWW-VHF.......

[Bruce Richardson]

On Friday morning, I asked Janice if she'd be interested in a 4-grid rove to the Wausau grid corner (EN44/54/55/45) for the CQWW-VHF contest.  She said "yes"! (Her alternative was to mow the lawn.)  So we spent Friday afternoon preparing her car.  It was hot, but we were in the shade.

Her car has a Yaesu FT-857 permanently installed. We just needed to install antennas.

Over an hour of searching in the shed FINALLY revealed the roof racks for her car. They were in the last place I looked. They were NOT in all the other places I looked multiple times.

While searching, I found a VJB beam and pulled it out. We planned to use a HyGain Omni ring (for 6m) that we had purchased recently from K0SIX at the AU '26 gathering in early June. For 2m, we planned to use a VJB beam. We have a rooftop contraption that will hold a small beam and an omni above (or multiple omnis).  I had a strong interest in using a short beam for 2m because I feel that a 2m omni is hard to hear beyond a certain distance.

We spent some time working with PVC of different dimensions to fashion a way to put the 6m omni up at every Rover spot and still pull it down for travel. The VJB beam was installed, and now it was time to test the antennas.

The 6m Omni had low SWR up at 51.500. So we spent some time tuning it up to the sweet spot between 50.090 and 50.190.  Then I put the analyzer on the VJB beam just to "check" it for 2m.

The VJB beam had exceedingly high SWR. Hmmm. I inspected the solder joints on the VJB beam--they looked ok. I inspected the N connector on the coax running to the antenna feed. The center pin was of the proper depth. In fact, continuity testing proved that there were no "opens" in the entire coax. I swapped out coaxs. I was flummoxed. It was evening now on Friday night, and I had a CSVHFS planning meeting for which I needed to go inside. Because of this "bad" 2m antenna--and no way to easily switch to an omni because of the pipe diameter all of our omnis need--we cancelled our rover plans for Saturday.

Had we been successful in getting the Rover ready, we would have announced our plans on all the local hailing channels and hoped to have worked some of you in the region on 6 and 2 from four grids at the Wausau grid-corner.

On Saturday, still with consternation as to why the VJB beam was not resonant on 2m, I looked out on the tower section pile for an old crunchcraft 2m beam.  Uhhhh, what's this? Another VJB beam!  Hmmmm. When does a 2m beam not tune/resonate on 2m?  When it is a 222 antenna! So here is the sheepish part. With all of my years of experience, I spent all afternoon not questioning the 2-meter-ness of this 222 VJB beam.  Dang!  Had I found the proper beam, we'd have been out roving. Instead, I dabbled 6m-only in the CQWW-VHF contest from home on our new PAR OmniAngle that I recently mounted on the tower. I'll report those results in my next email.

When we moved two years ago, many things were wedged into the shed and remained untouched until now.  Because of the speed of the move and all that wedging, my memory of where things are has faded.  Now Janice's roof rack and roving pieces are all in one place for next year's CQWW-VHF and a potential rove.

73
Bruce Richardson W9FZ