[VHFcontesting] Making roving fun and interesting

[JamesDuffey]

Detrick - You wrote:

“we had fun, but I don't feel like we did it right, and don't entirely know why we'd want to do it again.”

And 

“convince me that I should do rover (again)”

Without knowing more about your specific rover experience it is hard to make concrete suggestions, but here are a few things I have discovered over the years to make roving more fun and interesting:

1) Be on at the beginning of the contest. People will then know you are roving and look for you during the rest of the contest. A lot of people get on at the beginning work everyone that is on and then leave. You will work these people if you are on at the beginning, and more importantly, they will know that you will be on and probably workable for the rest of the contest from other grids, and possibly knew mults, so instead of abandoning the shack, they will come back from time to time to work you. Activity is much of what makes roving attractive. 

2) Location, that is sites from which you rove,  is an important, perhaps the most important, consideration in roving. While it is nice to setup in a rare grid or on a mountain top, there are other considerations that may make a more mundane site better to rove from. I have learned to start from a site that is easily accessible to many VHF stations and from which it is easy to get from one grid to another, like a grid convergence or grid boundary. This has two advantages; one, most of the active stations will know you are on from the get go and this will incentivize them to follow you, and two, you can give stations 2 or 3 or even 4 multipliers right away. This will sort of bond you to the fixed stations and they will follow you around, knowing that you are for real and wanting to work you again. After the initial QSOs, you can go further afield, perhaps to rarer grids, or that mountain top. 

For example, I often start my rove at the Moriarty convergence, a grid corner about 35 miles from Albuquerque and 40 miles south of Santa Fe. I can also work K5AM at his Horse Mountain QTH from here. I can get to good locations in all four grids with a travel time of about 10 or 15 minutes. Sometimes this is enough for the first day, sometimes I travel to new grids. You don’t need a convergence for this to work as a boundary is good too. If possible, visit the sites before the rove to ensure that they are good places from which to operate. 

3) Plan and schedule your route. Sit down with a road map or atlas, and grid square map, or the equivalent internet resources like the HA8TKS grid map and Google/Bing/Mapquest/Apple maps/Waze to plan a route. It is easy to get travel times from those resources. Add 5 or 10 minutes or more as margin, depending on the length to be traveled.  Then put together a schedule, including time starting at a grid and the time you will leave. It is hard to keep on schedule if there are good band openings or you have technical problems, but if people know when and where to look for you, that will result in more QSOs. I find it easiest to try to leave a grid when I say I am going to leave and that keeps me on schedule best, provided you have planned realistically and not gotten too far behind schedule.

As much as possible, plan your travels north-south. It is roughly half the distance to get from one grid to another going north-south than going east-west.

4) Publicize your rove. Once you have a route and schedule planned, send it out to active VHFers in the area from which you will rove. If you have a local, or semi-local VHF group,  send your itinerary to their e-mail reflector. Similarly, if there is a local contest club, send your itinerary to them or have a member of the group send them your itinerary. Include your cell phone number as it is OK to arrange for QSOs by text or phone call as long as no QSO information is passed. 

5) Use assistance resources. I find APRS and a cell phone to be very useful. I use APRS-TX, an app for the iPhone, to send my location to the internet APRS server. Then the fixed stations can look on APRS.fi to see where I am and, with a little mental arithmetic, they can see if I am on schedule and figure out where to point their antenna. Most of the fixed stations I have talked to find APRS to be the easiest way to track me. I also get texts (preferred) and phone calls from fixed stations when they are trying to work me, usually when I am weak. Again, no QSO information should be passed by phone.

6) Know where active stations, especially the multi-multi stations, are. Look in past results to get this information for your area. With experience, you will know who you can work from where. Also, use a compass to determine the bearing to those stations from your rove sites and carry a compass to make sure that you are on the correct bearing. It is easy to trust your instinct as to which direction is which, but your instinct is often wrong. 

7) Operate in motion if possible. It is a lot easier to stay on schedule if you can operate in motion and if you have a second op that can drive, that helps a lot. It is really hard to pull up stakes and move if the band is open and you have a good run going, but being able to operate in motion helps this a lot. Plus travel time is a big chunk of a rovers assets and if you can be on the air when in motion you are making the most of the time you have available. I find operating while driving to be dangerous and don’t do it, but some others seem to be able to cope with it. 
  
8) Have as many bands as possible. While roving, you probably heard the oft repeated question, “Do you have any other bands?” More bands not only give you more QSO points and mults, but they also make people stick with you for a longer time and you will give them more points, which is good. 

Also, move people up the bands you have when you work them on the lower bands. Before you move, though, always ask if there are others on frequency who need to work you. Also, ask when you get to the new band if there are others to work before QSYing again. 

It is not so expensive to add even a minimal capability for new bands these days. One of the  Transverters Store (Ukrainian) transverter and a WA5VJB easy Yagi will set you back about $100 and will yield lots of mults and QSOs, as well as build good will among the better equipped fixed stations.

9) If your wife is licensed, have her operate under her call as well, using the family rule. That way you will be providing twice as many QSOs for the fixed stations; something they will appreciate. There is an old adage in ham radio that a woman’s voice is worth 6 to 8 dB, which is perhaps sexist, but it is true that if you are in a pileup the station managing the pileup needs to sort out the stations and a women’s voice is easily distinguishable in this hobby.

10) Don’t be afraid to stretch your capabilities. Try to work stations at great distances, even if you don’t think it possible. That will add to the fun.

11) Coordinate with other rovers to make sure that you are not operating from the same spot at the same time and to see if you can put on grids that each other is not putting on. If possible, try to cross paths with another rover at least once in your rove, preferably when one or both of you are near a grid boundary. It is fun to work quickly on all the bands each has, move grids and do it again. A steady diet of this can be draining though, and is not viewed well by some fixed ops. 

12) Ask for advice from local VHF ops. They can often help you with sites from which to operate, hints on who is on when, and tips on local operators not to miss. 

Notice I have not said much about equipment here. That is secondary to other considerations. But, if you want to look to improve your rover equipment, strive to be loud on two. Most QSOes with locals originate on this band, and if they can work you on two, chances are that they can work you on other bands as well. Be loud on two. 

I hope this helps. If not, or if I didn’t address the specific issues you had roving for the first time, let me know. I have more tips that may help. I hope that others chime in as well.

Having said all that, roving is not for everyone. It can be hard work and is not always rewarding for the amount of time and effort one puts in. It is also not cheap, depending on how far you go, the price of fuel, and what kind of vehicle you rove in. But I find it fun and rewarding, and the thanks that many of the fixed stations give you when you give them a new mult is priceless. 

Listen for the weak ones. - Duffey KK6MC

James Duffey KK6MC
Cedar Crest NM