Amateur Radio Page

September VHF contest 2002:

This was sort of an unplanned event in a sense. I was NOT planning on running this contest originally because I only had a 2 meter mobile and a 2m/440 handheld at the time...and NO antennas...sort of self explanatory huh? Anyhow, Bob (KB9PJL) and Charlie (N0AKC) convinced me to go out ROVING no less. I ended up making crossbars for the portatower and put the six meter beam together the night before. I then went out to Bob's early Saturday morning to get the mobile rigs (Kenwood 742 with 6,2,440 in it; Kenwood 621A for 220), the inverter for the rotor, the little 2 meter beam (4 element--for portable beam operation), the 220 and the 440 beam. I was using KB9LVK's 7-element homebrew that we used for field day.

I started up at the Elk Mound Hill site again, and set up the system (of course 1st time up it took forever). I did run a GPS unit to find my grid squares and had my atlas with me. The first few grids I worked out of I stayed for longer periods of time. I did end up (toward the end of the contest just running the various mobile antennas on the car and breezed through the grids. No-one was really running FM (my only mode). I did make contacts from 9 grids though. I was tired and worn out after this, but I did have a good time along with enjoying weird looks when going down the highway with the tower up and the little beam rotating and when I was sitting. The Picture does not show well, but the tower was utilizing only 1 ten foot section and a mast pipe. I had the little tripod up at the back so I could run the 4 element on the road.
With the tower upright on the trailer it stands at 11'6", so I had room to run a rotor on the tripod. When I stopped to set up at various stops, I tilted the tripod down, tilted the tower over, transferred the rotor from the tripod to the tower masting, put a 10 foot section at the top of the rotor and ran 2 crossbars for the 4 yagis. The 4-element 6m and 10 element 220 were on the bottom spreader, the 10 element 440 and the 7 element 144 beams wer on the top spreader. Toward the end of the weekend I was getting down to 5-10 minutes teardown/setup. I think the travveling did a number on the '85 Chevy wagon though, as shortly after the contest, the frame rail broke near the rear trailing arm...retirement of a good vehicle.

Results were as follows: 156th Place overall (out of 535), 4th Place Central Division (out of 6), 2nd (out of 2) in WI with 16,468 points, 246 Q's, 46 multipliers, 9 grids.

The pics are numbered and explained below. Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture