[VHFcontesting] K4GUN's After Action Report

[k4gun at comcast.net]

What an experience! I have found my niche in this hobby and its roving. So much happened and so much was learned that I think I'm actually going to write an article for QST about how to get started into roving. This report will just focus on a few of the high and low points.
The good news is, there were not a lot of low points. The worst thing to happen was that I made precious few contacts from my main operating area at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and tunnel. I don't know if that's due to lack of activity or inefficient antennas or both. Most likely, its a combination of those plus all the big gun stations looking in other directions. There just are not enough stations in FM27 to justify much searching there.
I missed a few SKEDS and that is really a bummer. One of those was just because I forgot and the others were because I couldn't find the people. Again, I think the antennas just were not up to the task for the distances involved.
The only other low point was an equipment issue on 432. My feed line ran out of the radio and into a 2 meter amp, then to a dual band antenna for 2 and 432. When I was on 432, I of course turned off the amp and pre-amp. It became obvious that the amp being in line caused huge losses on both tx and rx. I took the amp out of the line and things improved on 432. However, the pre-amp was so important on 2 meters that I decided I was better off sacrificing some Qs on 432 in order to be able to hear on 2 meters. I'll fix that next time by using separate antennas on each band and feeding them directly.
The high points were what happened at the beginning and end of the contest and the guy in VA Beach that stuck with me for so long. Because my primary plans were changed due to weather on Skyline Drive, I went to an alternate spot that I had scouted 2 weeks prior. This was a critical move. If I hadn't found this spot, I would have been in big trouble. The spot at Chester Gap gave me a great view to the East where I picked up a lot of mults early on. This included a few FM contacts on my HT on 223.500. I used a homebrew yagi into my VX6R putting out a whopping 1.5 watts and picked up 3 extra mults and all of them were from the first spot.
The next high point was working KN4SM. This guy followed me from Charlottesville to VA Beach on all three bands we had in common. This is also the guy who I worked back in December when I was scouting the VA Beach area. I hope he scored well in the contest because he really helped me a lot.
Finally came the frantic last 3 hours. Holy cow! I was up in FM29 and worked a lot of new stations. I missed a few guys who just couldn't hear me, but I have plans to get them next time with better antennas. My score jumped dramatically in those last hours. I found a lot of my local club members who had been looking for me unsuccessfully earlier in the day and all were relieved I was doing OK. This was also the cause of a couple other missed SKEDS because I couldn't break from what I was doing.
I still haven't gone over the log. K3UI was doing my logging in the passenger seat and did a great job keeping up with it. I'll check it over tonight, but I think we ended up with something like 140+ Qs and about 42 mults. I think the final score was in the 7600 range. Considering conditions, activity and the type of equipment used, I'm pretty happy with that. Being my first contest, I'm rather proud of it. We'll see how it stacks up.
Thanks to all who helped. This list was an invaluable resource. My learning curve would have been a lot steeper without the expertise here. The experience and advice here will be combined with what I learned first hand to launch me full throttle into VHF roving for a long time to come.
Oh yeah... pics will be posted at the ARRL Soapbox in the next few days.  Just wait until you see what I do for the next one!
73 to all
K4GUN