Zack,
The answer is in the body of the e-mail from N6NB:
"when W6TE roved alongside two stations using the car-seat packages,
they worked the same distant stations on the same bands as W6TE did".
W6TE finished #3 with a conventional rover (with full-size external
antennas) and the other two stations finished #4 & #5 (with the compact
car-seat stations).
Nobody is claiming these compact stations are as good as a conventional
rover, but are certainly better than nothing and appear to be capable of
"real" (non-local) QSOs.
73, Dave/K8CC
On 3/11/2016 12:08 AM, Zack Widup wrote:
Is this setup good for anything besides grid circling?
73, Zack W9SZ
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 8:41 PM, James Duffey <jamesduffey@comcast.net>
wrote:
N6NB asked me to post this for him as he cannot post directly to
VHFContesting. I am happy to do that for him.- Duffey
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to James Duffey for his analysis of how the new assistance
rule is working out. What he says matches what I've observed as
well. Well done!
I also want to follow up on what Duffey said about the 10-band
"antenna-free" station shown in the QST article about the September,
2015 VHF contest.
Duffey says having 10 bands (including antennas) in one small package
that will fit on a car's passenger seat would be good for beginners.
That's true, but it was designed for the other end of the spectrum: senior
citizens who may have 50+ years experience in amateur radio. Some of
us are now finding it difficult to climb a ladder and then hoist anything
bulky onto a car roof. Climbing a ladder while carrying a "toolbox"
station aloft seems much harder than it was just a few years ago.
So I started building stations with 10 bands in a single package that fits
on a car seat, including antennas. The maiden voyage for one of those
stations was last September. A photo of it ended up in QST, but the
caption isn't quite right. It said the #3, #4 and #5 finishers in the
rover category where using those compact stations.
Actually, only the #4 and #5 rovers were using them. The #3 finisher was
W6TE, using his often-photographed red Dodge diesel truck. It very
definitely has external antennas--big ones. The point I was trying to
make in my September soapbox item was that when W6TE roved
alongside two stations using the car-seat packages, they worked
the same distant stations on the same bands as W6TE did.
This is not to say that the "antenna-free" stations perform as well as
W6TE's setup with its long Yagis and loop Yagis. Of course, the
WA5VJB PC-board log periodic Yagi that I'm using only delivers a
few dB of gain. However, this particular model works on five bands
(902 through 5.7 GHz). The LPY, plus a small dish, can yield respectable
performance in a package that fits on a car seat. The "rubber duck"
antennas used for 6, 2, 222 and 432 are admittedly a compromise.
It's also feasible to use mobile "mag mount" whips on the lower bands
without losing much portability. Then the car-seat antennas
are only used on 902 and up.
The whole point of this is to still be able to rove when hoisting a "tool
box" setup onto a roof platform has become too difficult.
The final section of the roving page on N6NB.com now has a descrip-
tion of the smallest 10-band station-on-a-car-seat. Within a day or
so I hope to add a section with photographs of a still-newer 10-band
station that also fits on a car seat. That one uses DEMI transverters
rather than DB6NT hardware, so it's a little larger than the one shown in
QST. But it's still small enough for one old guy to carry it and place it
on
a car seat.
73, Wayne, N6NB
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