W3DHJ/rover
VHF Contesting on S.E. Colorado's
High Plains
Sagas , Fables
& Tall Tales 
After four years my VHF Rover web page was getting weighed down
with too much added material. It was becoming a real hog to load
for some visitors -- I'm sure. So, I broke a Big Chunk of it out
and created this web page: Sagas, Tall Tales, Anecdotes, Yarns,
Whoppers and Fabrications (the last not to be confused with the
fabrication of my homebrew
6M or 2M Halos. HI!HI!)
ARRL June VHF 2007 -- The
Eagle
In June, 2007, I had an absolutely surreal encounter with an eagle.
I was parked to the side of a
r e m o t e
dirt road in DM87. The eagle came down from the heights to about 5
feet off the road about 200 feet out in front of me. He proceeded
to glide down the center of the road towards me. Nary a wing flap
the whole time. As he glided past me, I could have reached out the
open window and grabbed him. No noise at all in his passing. I
swear he was staring at me as he passed. About 100 feet behind me,
he rose in a thermal and reached 2-300 feet within seconds. It was
one of those pee-in-your-pants moments.
And, of course, I had my mic in my hand - - not my
camera...
ARRL June VHF 2008
-- K8GP 2M QSO
The most memorable QSO of this contest occurred on Sunday morning.
I always over-night in my own bed -- the best motel in the 4 grids
I normally trawl through. I had plans to go back out 'early' on
Sunday. But, I stayed way out in
DM87 fairly late on Saturday night, and
I just could not throw myself on the floor that easily the next
morning. So, it was 8 A.M. when I was getting ready to drive off.
I got in the car and turned on the rig to see if "all systems are
go!". I heard this tremendous signal low in frequency when the rig
came on. I tuned down and BINGO!, there was
K8GP FM08 at 5/9+. I was positive I
hadn't work him on
6M from
DM78 on Saturday -- so I
gave him a shout and he came back and we 'exchanged'. I started
logging it and looked more closely at the display on the
IC-706 to see what
frequency we were on. The numbers looked
Real Weird! HOLY CRAP!! I'm on
144.197!!!
The chatter I heard later informed me I had probably slept through
the best of the
2M E-skip.
sigh.......
In a later email exchange with
W3ZZ, Gene told me: "It was the longest
reported (
2M) contact at
2176 km (1352 miles)."
Wowser! Little ol' me with 110W and two stacked, homebrew halos
from my driveway.
Check out
K8GP -
Grid Pirates:
http://www.k8gp.net/. Serious contesters - those
fellers.
CQ WW VHF July 2008
-- KK6MC/r
Duffey (on the left) along with his loving wife and driver,
Virginia (taking this picture) dropped in at my
DM87 site during his 2-day rove from
Hastings, Nebr. (
EN00) to
his home QTH in New Mexico (
DM65). He was roving with a homebrew
6M halo and a homebrew 3-el
2M Yagi on a 12 foot mast.
Six Meters was open at the time, and we probably lost something
like 100
QSOs from
DM87 between us while we
spent 30-some minutes swapping lies. (Sorry, guys!) This was my
first 'path crossing' with another rover, and it made my outing
that day a little more 'special'.
Visit
Duffey's
VHF Blog: kk6mc.blogspot.com
Let me explain here the covering on my windshield (on the car in
the back.) Summer temps out in this country can soar well over
100°F. I made an
outside sun blocker from a
twin-bed-sized mattress cover. I cut off all the edge material --
leaving just the pad. To hold it in place I close the car doors on
it and lift up and set the windshield wipers on its lower edge.
Works a treat! Of course, rovers in SUVs or trucks would probably
require the queen-sized version.
HI!HI!
ARRL June VHF 2009
-- KR0VER/r
On Saturday I went north to start the contest in
DM79 and then moved east into
DM89 before dropping down
into my usual quad of grid squares. As it turned out, Eric,
KR0VER was running the same
route before turning north. So, we ran as a "rover pack" out to
Colorado Highway 71. Here
we are just south of the DM89/DM88 line before he turned north and
I continued south.
That's Eric standing outside the vehicle. And, that's Eric's dad
(also, Eric) doing the driving for him. What a dad!!
From the top down Eric has 2M, 6M (halo), 220Mcs, 432Mcs, and a
cross boom with 902Mcs, 1.2GHz, 2.3GHz, and 3.4GHz. For 5.7GHz and
10GHz, he gets out of the van and waves a horn around by hand. At
least thats the way I think it all goes together...
Makes my lil' 2 band mashup in the background look wimpy.
Visit
Eric's VHF Activity web page:
www.kr0ver.org
Constructive comments
and/or discussions:
Last updated: 23-May-10