It's after 2am and I just got home, but figured I'd give a quick email
about the rove.
We said after the 14 grids in January that it was too much, we shouldn't do
that many. So we did 13 this time. Somehow. Started in Stoddard NH, ended
Saturday in Ft Washington PA, then ended at Hogback Mtn in VT Sunday night,
about 850ish miles of driving.
Very many thanks to all of the stations that worked us, especially those
that were repeat customers, and also those who got to listen to me do
something that vaguely resembled morse code on the microwaves (pretty sure
someone got a "37" instead of a "73" at one point).
We haven't done a final tally yet, but we're looking at 97 or 98 mults with
250-300 points across 7 bands.
Some comments from the contest:
-We knew the weather sealing on the coax entry into the car wasn't great.
This was highlighted by the water literally POURING in when we started to
move after lunch Sunday. Had to go QRT for a few hours until we got out of
the rain and were able to make sure we didn't dump water all over the radios
-Rackmounting the radios was a real good idea. We were much better
organized this time
-2304 is a lot harder to work than 903 and 1296, even with similarly
equipped stations
-We managed to snag W2SZ from FN22 on 6, not a great feat except we only
were in that grid for maybe 2-3 minutes as I-87 crossed into it from FN21
to FN32.
-We thought it was neat that we worked a station or two on E's Saturday. We
were totally unprepared for the huge opening on Sunday where we were
working Alabama, Texas, Florida and all over the South with 100W and a
loop, while weaving in and around hills. 6m produced more mults than the
other 6 bands combined.
-Apologies to W2CCX for my total brainfart on how to send numbers in CW.
FN21 ended up being FN....dit
dah..dit....dit...dah...6....dah....7....dah...ditditditditdit before he
switched to sideband and we had a little laugh.
-Apparently the contest ends at 11pm Eastern, not midnight. This meant we
arrived at Hogback in FN32 with 15 minutes left in the contest. We ran 7
bands with AF1T in under 10 minutes, and worked a couple other stations on
the 6 and 2, and probably made at least a dozen contacts before the contest
ended. That was a close one, and the K1SIG/R crew was pretty pumped on
adrenaline from slamming through those contacts so fast. A great way to end.
-My milk crate microwaves still did very well, with contacts longer than 40
miles on several occasions.
Pictures can be seen on my instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/wa1te_radio/
Chris posted some on his page here:
https://www.instagram.com/chrislumens/
and Sarah on hers here:
https://www.instagram.com/sjlumens/
I'm not sure when the next major effort will be, in about 2 months there'll
be another baby in the house and getting out will be hard. Chris KG6CIH and
I will probably crop up with assorted efforts in the upcoming contests,
together or alone, but not anything like this or January.
Hope everyone had a great time.
73,
Sean Waite, WA1TE and K1SIG/R
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