After a zero degree night at home, I went out Sunday morning to start the rover vehicle and the "check engine" light came on and the engine was running rough. I didn't want to risk a dead rover vehicle on some roadside far from home, so I just assumed that this was going to be the end of the contest for me. I turned the rover antennas toward KC2SFU and told him why I was going to have to cancel our FN23 plans. In true ham spirit, he welcomed the adversity as a challenge and suggested we take my new commuter vehicle instead (no ham gear installed yet), and he would supply batteries, portable transceivers, and antennas if I could bring the antenna support structure with attached rotor. Next thing you know we are making the trek northward to just outside the Adirondacks, and while setting up, we were treated to quite a sight: A bald eagle was flying very slowly nearby, just 5 feet above the treetops across the road. We were limited to 2m/432 only at this location, but I was thankful to be on the air at all. We had only 3 elements available on each band, but were still able to work 224 miles on 432 (using only 20 watts). On 2m we were happy to be able to work N3RG on CW who was 276 miles away in FM29. We were also delighted to find a surprisingly high number of FM simplex contacts on both bands despite the horizontal polarization of our dual band antenna. It was great to hear the callsign N2PA back in the mix again after a few years of absence. He said he was operating from a different location (his home station), waiting to see how many other operators showed up. Another contact of note: We provided KA1ZE/3 FN01 with his 59th grid on 2m.
After I got home and had dinner, I went out to the rover vehicle to see if it was going to run rough again, but it was
running fine this time. So I got on the air and then noticed that the rotor was no longer working. Luckily, the antennas were
stuck south which is probably the best direction from the home QTH. So I spent the last few hours of the contest operating
from the driveway, giving out FN22 to whoever I could work on 6m/2m/432. It's just as well, since there was freezing rain
predicted for that time period. Results are
here.
POINTS SUMMARY
Band QSOs QSO pts. Mults. ---------------------------------------------- 50 6 6 5 144 22 22 12 432 10 20 5 ---------------------------------------------- TOTALS 38 48 22 +3 grids activated -- 25 --- Claimed score = 1,200 ---
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the N2SLN rover team. |