I wanted to activate FN21, a grid that has not yet produced a good rover site for me in its northwestern quadrant. I did
leave home extra early to check out two spots in that grid, but the first one did not have any place to set up. I had to
go with the second spot--a less desirable one that looked like a home construction site which did, at least, have fairly good
elevation:
I knew this would be a risky maneuver so close to a road with lots of folks driving by, so I decided not to stay long, and
was thankful I brought a minimal antenna system that doesn't take long to put up and take down. The highlight of this grid
activation was being closer than usual to the mid-Atlantic region where activity levels are high in VHF contests.
The next move was to activate my usual spot in eastern FN12, but the threat of thunderstorms was now imminent just as the NWS had promised. Towering cumulonimbus clouds could be seen to the north and distant lightning crashes began coming through the speaker. So once again I was glad I had a small antenna system, since I might need to leave quickly. I managed to make a few contacts, even providing K1TOL FN44 with a new grid on 6m, but made only two contacts on 2m. I heard a couple very weak 6m stations in Nova Scotia FN65/75 (about 500 miles) but after turning the Moxon that way, I still couldn't get their attention. Still, the Moxon has great rejection, making it a good choice if you need to null out a strong local station and larger antennas cannot be fit in/on the vehicle. At this point, I started hearing thunder over the noise of the speaker, engine, and air conditioner, so I knew it was time to act. In a record 20 minutes I had everything disassembled, secured to the car, and mobile whips connected again--something that normally takes 30 minutes. I got soaked, but it was better than having all that metal raised high in the air just as the lightning is arriving. Of course, as I was leaving to go home for the day, 6m opened up. Thankfully the mobile whip I bought for just such occasions was enough to do the job and I worked K5CM EM25 as my first sporadic-E contact of the contest, and then sped down the mountain and went home. After dinner I went back out to the rover vehicle and found 6m to still be open just enough for me to make one more contact before the conditions disappeared.
Sunday morning's plan was to drive 90 minutes north to my usual FN23 spot, but 6m opened while I was still driving
through northern FN22. I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and logged one contact, then got back on the road. The band
dropped down a bit, then as I entered FN23, it opened stronger than before. I was only a few seconds away from a public park,
so I pulled in, pointed the car to the south (to provide a ground plane for the trunk-mounted whip), and made several
contacts to the southeastern US for 15 minutes. When I didn't hear anything new, I resumed my trip again. Half an hour later
I began hearing new stations on 6m as I was nearing my rover site and didn't know how long these conditions would last, so I
used a roadside pulloff with a downhill slope to the south and worked everything I could with just the mobile whip:
After 20 minutes of that, I decided to finally move to the rover site. I set up the
stacked 6m loops
and immediately heard XE2WK and XE2NS now that I had a lower takeoff angle, but they were very weak with heavy QSB (signals
disappearing completely at the bottom of the fade cycle) and even multiop stations reported having a tough time getting back
to them. Then I noticed that the propagation hadn't moved--I was still hearing the same 4-land stations as before. Suddenly I
realized I was running out of time to get to my final grid.
Arriving at my usual FN22 site with only 75 minutes to go, I discovered that someone had parked in the spot that I needed for properly installing antennas. So I drove home and operated a limited setup from the driveway, knowing that some of the folks who were looking for me to be in FN22 would not hear me. Got the antennas set up and made my first contact 21 minutes from the end of the contest, and my final contact in the last minute of the contest. Results article is posted here: PDF.
POINTS SUMMARY
Band QSOs QSO pts. Mults.
-----------------------------------------------
50 54 54 34
144 22 44 12
-----------------------------------------------
TOTALS 76 98 46
--- Claimed score = 4,508 ---
LOG
START-OF-LOG: 2.0
LOCATION: WNY
CALLSIGN: N2SLN/R
CATEGORY: ROVER ALL HIGH
CLAIMED-SCORE: 4,508
CONTEST: CQ-VHF
CREATED-BY: WA7BNM Web2Cabrillo 1.11
NAME:
ADDRESS:
ADDRESS:
EMAIL:
OPERATORS:
SOAPBOX:
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 1835 N2SLN/R FN21 K3ZO FM18
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 1842 N2SLN/R FN21 W3SO FN00
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1844 N2SLN/R FN21 W3SO FN00
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1846 N2SLN/R FN21 W3PAW FM19
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1848 N2SLN/R FN21 W4RX FM19
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 1849 N2SLN/R FN21 W4RX FM19
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1854 N2SLN/R FN21 WB3BEL/R FM08
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 1903 N2SLN/R FN21 K3ISH FN21
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1904 N2SLN/R FN21 K3ISH FN21
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1916 N2SLN/R FN21 N8RA FN31
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 1917 N2SLN/R FN21 N8RA FN31
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 1925 N2SLN/R FN21 WA2FGK FN21
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1926 N2SLN/R FN21 WA2FGK FN21
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1939 N2SLN/R FN21 K3CB FM18
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 1940 N2SLN/R FN21 W3ZZ FM19
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1941 N2SLN/R FN21 W3ZZ FM19
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 1945 N2SLN/R FN21 K3ZO FM18
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 1948 N2SLN/R FN21 W2MMD FM29
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 2004 N2SLN/R FN21 W3BD FM19
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 2005 N2SLN/R FN21 W3MEL FN10
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 2029 N2SLN/R FN21 KA1LMR FN43
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 2029 N2SLN/R FN21 KA1LMR FN43
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 2256 N2SLN/R FN12 KA2LIM FN12
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-17 2258 N2SLN/R FN12 KA2LIM FN12
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 2302 N2SLN/R FN12 W3BD FM19
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 2312 N2SLN/R FN12 VE3MMQ FN14
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-17 2353 N2SLN/R FN12 K1TOL FN44
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 0014 N2SLN/R FN12 W4RX FM19
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 0017 N2SLN/R FN12 WA2FGK FN21
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 0018 N2SLN/R FN12 WA2FGK FN21
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 0040 N2SLN/R FN12 K5CM EM25
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 0157 N2SLN/R FN22 K4WI EM62
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1348 N2SLN/R FN22 W4WA EM84
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1410 N2SLN/R FN23 K4WI EM62
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1412 N2SLN/R FN23 W6SAI EM63
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1415 N2SLN/R FN23 K4OMG EM66
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1417 N2SLN/R FN23 W4MW EM96
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1419 N2SLN/R FN23 W4NH EM84
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1421 N2SLN/R FN23 N4LR EM73
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1422 N2SLN/R FN23 W4WA EM84
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1423 N2SLN/R FN23 AF4OD/R EM72
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1426 N2SLN/R FN23 N4PN EM82
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1500 N2SLN/R FN23 N4NX EM84
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1501 N2SLN/R FN23 KU8E EM72
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1502 N2SLN/R FN23 AA4V FM02
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1509 N2SLN/R FN23 WO4DX EM74
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1512 N2SLN/R FN23 N3LL EL86
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1514 N2SLN/R FN23 W4AS EL95
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1515 N2SLN/R FN23 W4AVY EM63
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1518 N2SLN/R FN23 W8JI EM73
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1520 N2SLN/R FN23 K4SN EL96
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1608 N2SLN/R FN23 K8XS EL87
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1609 N2SLN/R FN23 K4LY EM85
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1611 N2SLN/R FN23 KA2LIM FN12
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 1617 N2SLN/R FN23 KA2LIM FN12
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1626 N2SLN/R FN23 WX4MM EM72
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1629 N2SLN/R FN23 WA4ZXV EM73
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 1635 N2SLN/R FN23 K1TEO FN31
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1636 N2SLN/R FN23 K1TEO FN31
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 1642 N2SLN/R FN23 KB1DFB FN41
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 1645 N2SLN/R FN23 KB2KIR FN22
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1646 N2SLN/R FN23 KB2KIR FN22
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1647 N2SLN/R FN23 K4RFT EM56
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 1655 N2SLN/R FN23 KT1J FN34
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1659 N2SLN/R FN23 KG4PSR EM65
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1700 N2SLN/R FN23 K4LF EM76
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1702 N2SLN/R FN23 W2EV FN03
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 1703 N2SLN/R FN23 W2EV FN03
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1717 N2SLN/R FN23 N4BCD EM64
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 1720 N2SLN/R FN23 W0HBH EM48
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 2039 N2SLN/R FN22 KA2LIM FN12
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 2040 N2SLN/R FN22 KA2LIM FN12
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 2052 N2SLN/R FN22 K3ISH FN21
QSO: 144 PH 2010-07-18 2054 N2SLN/R FN22 K3ISH FN21
QSO: 50 PH 2010-07-18 2059 N2SLN/R FN22 W2MMD FM29
END-OF-LOG:
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