[VHFcontesting] W1RT/R disaster rove

[John D'Ausilio]

Update for those interested:

the Jitney is alive again .. turned out that the differential is OK,
it was an axle that broke! Evidently the ebay aggregator that sold me
the van picks them up in large lots, then fixes them and sells them
off .. we're guessing that this one had a bad bearing on the left side
and was incompetently replaced in a way that prevented the axle spline
from fully engaging the differential, and the added load on the
abnormally short piece of spline caused it to fail and snap off.

In any case, an independent shop in Damascus fixed me up, and for a
very reasonable price I'll be picking it up tomorrow and driving it up
to Philly for the conference this weekend :)

de w1rt/john

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 11:40 AM, John D'Ausilio <jdausilio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Things started out pretty well .. made it up to Mohawk without
> destroying any antennas, got through shakedown and had things working
> pretty well. Trip to Camelback was a bit frustrating, many roads with
> height limits as you come south on US7 trying to hit I84 :(  Got to
> Camelback and found the gate locked, lost another hour finding
> security guy and unlocking. Finally got to the top, said hi to WA3UGP
> and got to work, pretty flat condx but tough with two multiops up
> there. W3SZ heard my 24G signal, but too much noise up there on RX to
> hear his. Off the mountain around 1AM, hotel at 2AM, 4 hours sleep and
> off to Pismire. Raining lightly there, condx same as Saturday ..
> seemed like I could work most anyone up to 1G out to about 250mi, but
> very tough on 2 and 3G. 5/10 seemed to have some enhancement in the
> rain.
>
> We left Pismire for the 3 hour run to Big Mountain, got off on US30
> and headed west. Got through Chambersburg and into the strip mall zone
> to the west, lots of traffic and stop/go on steep hills. Sitting at a
> red light on a 10% grade, light turns green, I hit the gas and BOOM!
> Jitney stops moving, no forward, no reverse .. arrgh! Seems that the
> differential is dead, at least it's not locked up so we roll backwards
> down US30 (with tow truck deflecting traffic), into a level parking
> lot, and proceed to disassemble all of the antennas so it could be put
> on flatbed and towed. Decided to drop it off at K1RZ's place since he
> offered, had room, and I needed somewhere safe to stash it until I
> could figure out what to do ..
>
> Rich and Phyllis picked us up at Dave's place, dropped me off at the
> DC metro in Rockville .. I missed the 7:20, got a ticket on the 8PM
> Acela, made it to the 11:22 Metro North and KB7MFM picked me up and
> brought me home just as the clock struck 1AM this morning.
>
> We were around 80K after leaving Pismire, on track for a very good rove .. alas
>
> Big thanks to Dave K1RZ for offering storage, Terry W8ZN for sage
> advice, Rich K1HTV, Phyllis K1WSN for rescue transportation, Andy K1RA
> for all the help and support and first class operating, and Terry
> KB7MFM for putting up with being the wife of a rover :)
>
> de w1rt/john
>