September 2004
Report
I went Rover expecting to have a poor run. The weather was to good
to
have good band conditions. I also had a ton of hardware problems and I
made
a lot of patches to stuff just to be able to go out. I had only planned
to do 6 grids and go home in time to sleep and get to work on
Monday. That all changed, I did 7 grids and contested right up till the
end of the contest. This means I did not get home till 3:30am-local. I
missed work on Monday all together but it was well worth it. It turns
out that I made most of the
microwave attempts that I should have been able to make (per KA1GT). I
made most all of the 5ghz contacts I expected to. This contest I
made my highest score ever and I made over 210 QSO's which is another
first for me. I know these numbers are not that high but they are not
bad for a SINGLE OP Rover. The scores in NEWS and ARRL do not make the
'single' destinction. I worked all my bands with N2PA 3 times and
W2SZ 4 times also new to me. 51 QSO's were on the microwave bands
mostly with W2SZ and N2PA. W2EA even came up with a couple of
surprising microwave contacts when I was in the NY Route 88 valley that
put some iceing at the end of the contest. I wish I could find more
microwave stations,even just up to 1.2ghz! I had 70 mults not including
the 7 grid mults. Northern PA was hit hard with recent rains and many
farm bridges were washed out but to my surprise all the bridges I
needed had already been replace or repaired. I also made a 396 mile
144mhz contact with K1WHS, yet another first for me. If you looked at a
grid map of my contacts you will see that all of my contacts were from
the south west to the north east. 6 meters never had an opening I
caught so I had no contacts further than 2meters. I had hopes of
working WB4WEN, K8GP and K1TEO more but other than them I worked
eveyone I wanted and more! No police stops and no problems with land
owners. Only nice waves and good hello's. Everyone I met was in a good
mood and kind.
More info can be found at: http://www.ke3ht.org/rover