[VHFcontesting] A handful of questions

[Sean Waite]

Hey everyone,

I'm working on getting my rover together (first time out, should be a hoot)
for September and am running into some questions.

We're looking at picking up transverters for 222 and 1296. Does anyone have
a good source of 100W attenuators for the IFs on these? 222 would have a
10m IF, 1296 would be 2m. It looks like most of them expect a 5W input, and
I can spin the power knob to cut the radio down that low, but if I forget
then I'd let the magic smoke out. Failing a reasonably priced attenuator
(with a T/R relay I'd assume), one thing I've heard is that 100W rigs can
sometimes spike in power if you have them turned all of the way down. My
IC-746 will do 5W minimum, is this safe to pump into a transverter? We'll
also have an IC-7000.

For 1296, I was looking at the sg-labs 23cm transverter. It looks like a
reasonable price, and people seem happy with them. The concern I have is
the 2W out, vs 5W of many transverters. I'd like to eventually put an amp
behind this to get more power out, would the 2W be a problem for most
things from DEMI/Kuhne/etc? The price of this may mean the difference from
being QRV on 23cm this contest or not, the Kuhne 23cm gear might eliminate
me getting an antenna as well, except for maybe one of those silly pcb
yagis from WA5VJB. My goal is to eventually get up on 23cm EME, even if
it's only a small station (which it will be).

My friend was also wondering if there was an inexpensive 10m only rig. The
HTX-10 is in the right price range, but without surgery it cannot reduce
power to something that a transverter can use. Any suggestions?

My rover plans are coming along. I have power figured out, parts are on
their way, and we're working on accumulating antennas and other bits. We're
looking around at some of the links I received previously, and other maps,
to try and pick our operation locations. We may start at FN51 and loop
around through several grids to end up in our home FN42 at the end. Having
never done this before, we have no idea how many grids is reasonable, but
we'll figure it out. One plan is to come up with the start and end points
for each day, and then a few grids in between to hit as we can. I'm
thinking maybe 3 grids on Saturday and 2 on Sunday.

One thing I'm not sure about is what happens if a site is occupied by
another rover, and if it's okay to park in the vicinity or if I should move
away further to avoid QRM. At least it would be an easy contact.

Thanks and 73, hope to see you on the air in September.

Sean WA1TE