[VHFcontesting] Brain pickin' time

[Mike (KA5CVH) Urich]

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 12:50 PM, James Duffey<jamesduffey at comcast.net> wrote:

> Stopping, getting out, setting outriggers, installing antennas, and cranking
> up a tower all takes up a lot of time and that is time that could be better
> used making contacts.

Mike wrote

Unless you are running 100+ q's an hour (4 band total) I don't really
see this as a problem.  Other obstructions such as the piney woods of
east Texas where you have trees 100'+ tall is a problem.  Obviously
getting up and over them is out of the league of a rover but every
little bit will help punch through.  I'm kinda looking at the 35-40'
range as I have a small two section 40 crank up in the back yard.
I've been looking at commercial towers to get some ideas and found a
way to do outriggers that should only take about 1 minute each,
seriously.  And, I'm looking into some ideas for getting QD's for the
boom to mast connections.  Although I don't care for QD's on feedline,
they're not permanent and I'm looking at some type of a QD on the
feedline too.  So at say ~1 minute per yagi to mast + feelline for
four bands we're looking at another 5-6 minutes tops.  Then crank it
up and get on the air.   I'm figuring 12-15 minutes tops.

Later this summer, after my run to Marfa TX to recon 30x-104 I want to
make a recon run up East TX to some spots I have picked out along the
general area of Hwy's 96 & 59.  This will give me an idea how long it
will take between operating spots.  I hope to make the September
contest with just 50/144 & maybe 432 we'll see.  At least I'll be back
on the air roving.

I also need a new logging program.  I had Scott's, N3FJP on an old
microbloat box that is no more.  I now have two laptops.  Mine (this
one) is a linux o/s and my work laptop is a microbloat, but I can't
install anything on the work laptop.  Has anyone tried running Scott's
logging program under WINE on Linux?  He and Kimberly told me that
they have heard of some people doing so.  Also has anyone tried using
his program from a thumb drive on a microbloat box?

-- 
Mike Urich, KA5CVH
http://ka5cvh.com
http://twitter.com/KA5CVH

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