19 unique calls and about 7,520 distance points

A plan is formed!

It just so happened that I was raised back in the 1940s and 50s only 3 miles from the center of totality near Marshall, MO. Many of my family still reside on or near the family farm as my family has for over a century. Over 10 years ago I had taken my 10GHz portable and worked Garth WOGR and Dave KB0PE from the farm (EM39ka) or nearby. I had no experience with roving in the heart of "bean / corn" country, but had roved many times in the ND / MN Red River valley. SO .... why not combine a 10GHz rove to try to work some of the local 10GHz operators, NLRS rovers and other 10GHz operators visiting the area for the eclipse?

My system is built around a Qualcom PA running 800mw. No sooner than the plan was hatched, and a week before I departed for Missouri, I discovered the Qualcom PA power supply had failed. So I ordered and obtained parts to repair the power supply AND A SPARE since I was going to be over 600 miles from home. While waiting on parts, I spent three plus days pouring over Google Earth (and street view) to try to locate sites that would afford decent horizions. NOT easly done I discovered. In the end three locations were defined, one 3 miles from the farm (from where I had worked KB0PE) and 2 others locations more distant. From these locations I figured I could work the southern Nebraska rover pack, Randy WB0JQQ and the move to work St Louis based rovers and others, at least that was the plan.

Saturday: August 19

8am found us in EM39hc just south of Mt Leonard, MO. The setup was on a gravel road with a great view to the west and northwest. Surprisingly not a single car came by in the 3 plus hours we were there. My nephew Andy KE0CYV kept me company and documented his initial 10GHz / roving experience. In short order the southern Nebraska rovers were worked, WA2VOI, KC0IYT, KA9VVQ, W9FZ, KC0SKM 51 to 57 SSB at 320km. Good start from sure. These are the only stations we expected to work from this location other than WB0JQQ in EM39cu 91km. Quickly worked Randy on SSB 59 / 59. This was only Randy's 2nd 10GHz contact, with his first being about a mile. With these QSOs our day was "made already". Bruce suggested I try the northern pack, "what a dreamer". Got Jon's phone number and called him, they could run at that moment. "Bang" N0AKC, K0CQ and K0KFC located in EN12hh 491km were in the log. Q5 S1 CW. This is getting better! Then Jon said I should check with Radar hill, again "oh sure!". Got Jim's MHC's number called him, worked K0KFC, K0MHC, WB0LJC EN03sb 613km away S9 - S9+ SSB .... WOW!! Calls were made to Gary W0GHZ in EN34lx and Greg KA9VDU in EN53ba but alas, nothing heard at either end. I then Waited for KO0Z availability only to find out too many trees in the way. Made the 1 1/2hr trip to EM38ng. Set up and was there from 11:45am to 5:30pm to only work Kevin AD7OI and KI7GVT in EN20kt 51 to 53 SSB. Returned to the EM39ka farm site and worked AF4JF in EM49rq CW and SSB.

Video credit: Andy Davis KEØCYV

Sunday: August 20

Went to early church, after church still thunderstorms ..... 11am went to the EM39ka site. Carried EVERYTHING about 250ft from the road into a pasture where I could "see" 90deg heading. Worked Herbert AF4JF and N0PQU located in EM38xw 5-8 SSB in the first 5 min AFTER being rained on heavily for about 20min. Umbrella covering the 10GHz system and my rain coat covering everything else in a pile in the pasture. Lightning popping all around making me fear for my life running back to the fence and crawling over the metal gate to get back in the car wondering when the wind would blow the umbrella away or blow water all over the 10GHz gear. ARGH ... Once the rain was over, Worked Kevin and XYL twice more from EM38xw 112km and EM39os 88km. At 4pm at last worked Ron KO0Z and family for the first time after 2 days of trying, alas at only 138km sad to say. In the process of working Ron it was discovered that his battery booster was OFF ... TX drift was so rapid I could barely track him with the 290R "indent" tuning. Signal only about S4, not as strong as expected. Once that was resolved, Ron had multiple 817 issues crop up making his operation a nightmare. It is unknown how long one or both of the issues had haunted Ron as we had tried MANY MANY times during the two days. I had had enough of 87deg, rain and unrelenting sun. I had had nothing to eat since 7am and headed back to "my old MO home". Started to eat and my phone ran, Ron was in EM39wf, his old farm home and wanted to run. It was 6pm by now, took a couple of bites of food and went out and set up in the front yard. The idea was to work rainscatter off of a storm that was to the EAST of us BOTH .... backscatter ..... WIDE signals .... 817 issues verging on unsolvable. After 45 min we were at last able to work on FM ... rain scatter / backscatter with the most marginal of signals.

Summary:

My equipment worked well with no failures. At each setup, I noted for a brief period on the first TX sequence my power would be down a bit, but within 10sec or so all normal, STRANGE. I was pretty stressed out prior to the trip fearing that Qualcom power supply issues might return. I had tools and a space power supply, but the way I had packaged my system, an exchange would have taken close to an hour. After roving with a less than satisfactory compass I need to find a better solution. SO HARD to keep the compass card level as I sight the heading. I ran the system on a lawn tractor lead acid battery for the entire weekend with no issues. I had a nice 35amp 12V UPS battery for back-up if needed. I also need to have a way of computing headings while roving. I am used to worked previously known locations that I can select on the GPS to get a heading. Great fun. Thanks to all you guys and gals that made it possible..

Oh Yes ... the Eclipse!

There seems to always be an unexpected event/s that pop up at the last moment! I had my brothers flat bed truck at the pasture site in case I needed to operate off the road Sunday. I had my wife bring me over in the Accord to pick up the truck. On her way back to the farm she noticed an airbag warning indicator and failed to say anything to me about it. At breakfast Monday (Eclispe day) my 94yr old mother asked me to go to town and get ice where my nephew could freeze some banana ice cream for our post eclispe lunch. I headed off to town and noticed the airbag warning light on the dash. Upon returning from the ice run, I consulted the car manual and then called the nearest dealer 60miles away. (The time is 9am) It was quickly obvious this was a potently serious issue, NO AIRBAG might operate in the event of an accident! We had a 640mile return trip to Minnesota the next morning at 6am. Eclipse or not, I head for the Honda dealer, diagnosis indicated crash detection module failure, one in stock, requires programming -- 1 to 2 hrs -- NO choice... do it. After the repair I head back to the farm, driving under cloudy skies the entire trip, calls home for weather updates were not promissing. I arrived 5 min before totality! The heavy clouds were to the east and only thin overcast over the darkening sun. Totality was easily observed and breathtaking. The overcast moved on and it was clear as a bell as the moon slid by, exposing us once again to the Missouri heat. (The banana ice cream was WONDERFUL)

Right "Click" photo & View Image to enlarge

73 Bill KØAWU (/Missouri)

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