[VHFcontesting] Rover for June VHF

[Jarred Jackson]

Detrick,



Great to hear you are looking to head out as a rover. My total fixed height is about 11’5”. I recommend staying under 12’ for backroad bridges as well as tree branches in residential neighborhoods. I came to this conclusion by reviewing previous postings on the VHFContesting archive and looking up posted bridge heights in my area of the state. I still pull some leaves off the tree when I leave my own driveway. Also note that if you have a height of 12’ and come up to a 11’7” bridge posting, all is not lost. Check out the shape of the bridge. You will likely see where you can pass under it with plenty of margin (though it may be in the center of the bridge or the other lane). The posting is for the worst case location.



Good Luck and make sure you are paying attention to where your population areas will be (by looking at previous contest results on the ARRL website and rover plans posted in the VHFContesting archives).



Jarred



Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10



________________________________
From: VHFcontesting <vhfcontesting-bounces at contesting.com> on behalf of Detrick Merz <detrick at merzhaus.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 6, 2018 3:55:40 PM
To: vhfcontesting at contesting.com
Subject: [VHFcontesting] Rover for June VHF

Howdy Folks,

A few of us are planning to try June VHF as rovers. Never done VHF
contesting before, and obviously not rover. But it sounds like fun so we're
going to give it a go. Planning on 6m, 2m, & 70cm. Omnis in the bed of the
truck, some yagis for stop-and-shoot. If you care, we're planning two
rovers (two trucks), 2 ops in each, running limited class. I'm sure we'll
cause all kinds of problems for each other doing it this way, but we'll
learn a lot too. And camping is more fun with friends.

Yesterday I finished up the base for securing a mast into the truck bed.
The mast tubing recesses into this base and gets guy lines from near the
top to 4 existing anchor points in the bed.

The question of the day is: how tall is too tall for going down the road?
The truck bed is 3' off the ground, and the tubing as it is is 10'. Is 13'
too tall, should I cut the tubing down to 8'? Should be no problem on major
roads, but I'm wondering about tree strikes on smaller roads.

Thanks for any insight,

-detrick
K4IZ
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