[VHFcontesting] January Rover

[Dave Wendling]

Hi Folks,

    We had a great time roving this January.  COLD!  Our home QTH is near Mt
Greylock in Berkshire County MA.  We decided to drive down to Virginia ahead
of time and start there. Then make our way home slowly during the contest.
We wanted to start on the Skyline drive but the road was closed due to the
previous nights snow storm!  Luckily we had some spare time before the
contest and stopped in at the local Front Royal tourist info station.  We
met some great people who showed us a number of high spots that we could use
instead, so the long drive down was not a bust!  Speaking of cold, never
stay at the Front Royal Motel when it is below freezing!  The heater in the
room wasn't big enough to heat a closet!

    I didn't cause too much trouble this contest. I only insulted one women
who I mistakenly thought was a man on the radio. Her husband said he was
putting his XYL on the mike and I swear a mans voice came back. We had a
small disagreement on alternate lifestyles, she won.  I lost my favorite
soldiering iron at a rest stop somewhere on I84 in New York. After a quick
repair to my 222 transverter (I pulled the Coax out to hard and broke the
inside connection) I thought it would be smart to leave my iron on the
ground near the van to cool off while I used the restroom.  Nope, that
wasn't smart.

    We scored a personal best on our four bands ABCD of 19500. Around 235
contacts divided among the bands.  It was also the first time I experienced
a 6 meter opening during a contest.  Made quite a few EM contacts from the
East Coast, that was fun.  Over all we didn't do bad considering the
difficulty of not getting up high in the East during the Winter. We brought
no beams and only used stacked HO loops.

    We beta tested a Rover logging/scoring program I wrote for the Palm
Pilot. My partner KB1EUH has a difficult time with a laptop while we are
moving and thought it would be easier using a Palm Pilot.  The program
worked great but needs some refinements.

Over all super fun time!!  Thanks to all the folks who followed me through
my 10 grids and gave me those points....

Dave & RoAnn

KB1EAA & KB1EUH