[VHFcontesting] Operating both from home and as a rover

[peter h]

0700pdt 11jun2020
A lot of us now live in places where operation from home is only marginally possible on 1 or 2 bands OR home is surrounded by mountain ranges in all directions, as in the case where I live in DM04ne: Roving is almost a necessity in addition to operating from home: I have done this for years and submitting 2 entries, of course.
For many contests, I rove in decent mountaintop places about 20 - 40 miles from home and activate 2 grids. 
For ARRL Jun VHF, I'm just going to do 6m SSB/CW/FT8 from home QTH. I do not yet have FT in vehicle, and quite frankly am not too excited about that way of doing business!bt73Pete, N6ZE


-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Kavanagh via VHFcontesting <vhfcontesting at contesting.com>
To: VHF Contesting <vhfcontesting at contesting.com>
Sent: Thu, Jun 11, 2020 3:58 am
Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] Operating both from home and as a rover

Thanks to everyone for your replies on this subject.  I have now received two rather authoritative replies. One from Rick, K1DS, who has done just what I asked about and his experience was that the two QSOs from the same grid are both counted by ARRL.  And most importantly from N1SFE at ARRL who concurs  His words were:

"When you’re operating fixed, you’d use the callsign without the /R.  when rover, you’d use the /R.  You’d submit two logs, one as a fixed station, or one as rover.  When sending your callsign, you’d have to append the /R when rover and they’d log you as such.  They will not get penalized as dupes as they worked and logged you as 2 distinct callsigns."

One respondent described this as "double-dipping", which is kind-of the case.  The ARRL could have chosen to disallow it, but they have not.  It seems to me that this is justified by the fact that the rover must use completely separate equipment (under the General Rules for VHF Contests Rule 1.3), so it really is a separate station, and that you need to go to the effort of travelling to and operating from at least one other grid than your home grid.

So I am going to give it a go, as it will provide an opportunity to help out the other participants in the contest a bit more, in a year when I am unable to put in a full serious operation from a single competitive station.  So if you hear me, listen VERY carefully to my callsign!

73,
Steve VE3SMA, VE3SMA/R

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