[Fourlanders] September Contest kick-off

[Bob Lear]

Well I warned you last week that it was time to get things going for the 
September contest and here we are.

A work session was held today at NN4W's QTH for Crank-up mast 
maintenance school.  Attending were WW8RR, W4KXY and W4ZST.  The 
rotators were also delivered to WW8RR for some further maintenance and 
rf filtering upgrades before the contest.

We also had a band captains meeting since four of us were there and made 
some executive decisions based on some recent input.  Brian NX9O has to 
make a company business trip and it will occur during contest time so he 
has told us to make plans around his absence.  He has graciously allowed 
us to take 'Great White' for operating and his generator for our power. 
  Both trailers are here at W4ZST right now.  Another key player, Ivan 
K4VJM is still not back to 100% and in fact is going to have knee 
surgery at the end of August to help get him back on track.  After some 
discussion, we decided that it would be best to just do limited multi-op 
again.  It appears that we will have enough trailer pullers. too.  W4ZST 
will become 222 band captain instead of microwave.  Ron's son Jim WE8W 
will also not be able to join us this time.

So the band captains are:  Jim W4KXY 6m, Scott NN4W 2m, Bob W4ZST 222
and Ron WW8RR 432.  We expect Mac K4RBM, Kos N4NIA, Kim WG8S, Jeff 
W0ONR, Bill KI4US, Randal N4AC, Tom KI4WOU, Paul W4SKI and Dean K2JB. 
We of course have room for more ops and please let me know if you are 
not on this list but planning on coming to the contest with us or if you 
are unable to come as planned.  We'd like to hear from K4RF, WB4MAK, 
K8EAB, N8CQ, ND4O, WA4VJC and other suspects.  I think Paul has some 
more friends interested too.

Pulling trailers:  I hope we can get Mac K4RBM to pull Great White as 
he's the only one of us with enough truck for it, Ron WW8RR - Generator, 
Jim W4KXY - BlackHawk for 6m, Bob W4ZST - KXY trailer black Mamba (with 
the golf cart on it) for 2m, Scott NN4W - His small cargo trailer with 
mast for 222 and he will pick up Jeff and the food again, Kos N4NIA - 
Ron's tower trailer for 432.  We'll try to coordinate Ron and Kos 
getting together before the contest so Kos and Sherry can leave from 
home and pull the trailer up and if not, Bill KI4US may also be 
available for pulling a trailer up if needed and I think Randal is also 
capable and available.  That should take care of the trailer situation 
and assignments.  We will go up in the same order we did last time to 
set up at the campground.

Food: Last time I talked to Jeff he was planning on coming again and 
cooking as usual.  When you respond to me about coming to the contest, 
let me know if you will be there for the entire time Friday evening to 
Monday morning or a shorter period for our meal planning.

"All meals" list so far:  W4KXY, W4ZST, WW8RR, NN4W, K4RBM, N4AC and
W0ONR.

The usual station and antenna set-ups are planned except for 222 where I 
will use my own station this time.  We are fine on equipment and 
antennas and hardware.  We will stick with WriteLog 10.67 as all the 
computers have been updated to that. Brian also offered us the WriteLog 
server and we will take advantage of that as it is all set up and ready. 
Scott will again bring the time server that worked so well last time and 
he will be the lead networking guy this time with expert help from Bill 
KI4US.  We are also going to try a different 6m auxiliary antenna this 
time instead of the AZ-EL 6m beam.  Ron is making a stacked pair of 6m 
omni squalo's that he has had some good results with from home and we'll 
set those up for the 6m 'skip zone' this time.

Looking forward to the contest and to seeing everyone on the mountain in
just a few weeks.  Another update will come out when I get some feedback 
from everyone.

If Brian's situation should change within the next week or so, we may be 
able to change plans and we'll let you know accordingly.  He'd really 
much rather come to the contest than go on a company business trip!!

Let me hear from you.
Thanks and 73, Bob W4ZST
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