[VHFcontesting] Common rover frequency

[John D'Ausilio]

sounds like rover nirvana has been achieved ;)  Unfortunately I think
it would only work when roving around a central activity center with a
small number of fixed stations. In the summer VHF 'tests in the
Northeast Corridor 144 Mhz is pretty well packed from .170-ish well up
towards .300

Different area of the country require different strategies, as many
before me have observed. Up here we have a large number of
participants and a lot of water paths and accessible mountains within
range of those participants so the rover can benefit from camping out
somewhere well-known and making a lot of noise. If we arrive at a spot
and someone's on or near .247 then we just squeeze in wherever we can
nearby and people who are looking for us will find us. 5 kHz spacing
would be wonderful, but sometimes it's tough ..

de w1rt/john

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Bruce Richardson <w9fz at w9fz.com> wrote:
> What has worked for us is to spread the rovers out on about
> 10kc spacing. Every rover understands that they don't "own"
> the frequency but it sure helps the fixed stations find
> them.  144.230, 144.240, and 144.250 are common as well as
> .150, .160 and .170.  Sure in some contests, we go to 5 Khz
> spacing but prefer the 10 khz for QRM reduction.  Some
> rovers make one long "announce" transmission on .200 when
> they get to a new location and then QSY up to "their" freq
> hoping to be found.