N0LD/R Soapbox Entry for the September 2019 ARRL VHF Contest
We are a group of VHF/UHF/Microwave rovers in Oklahoma. We use the website http://WWW.OKROVER.INFO for general team rover information, but to primarily share our planned route, as well as to provide tracking updates during the rove.
N0LD/R was operated by Randy Wing – N0LD , Harvey Jones – W0HGJ, and Marcus Sutliff – N5ZY. This particular team had operated together once before in the January 2019 VHF contest without the dual 2m and 70cm loops. The loops definitely improved our score this September, we also had 10 ft gain antennas on 2m, 1.25m, 70cm, 33cm, and 23cm – with a vertical for 2m and 70cm FM and a vertical for 33cm, with a 6m loop.
KB0YHT/R was operated by Nick Farlow, KB0YHT. This was Nick’s first time rovering alone. He used handhelds only! He paper logged. Nick personally loves Turkey Mountain in Tulsa and agreed to operating there and on the grid corner there to give us some points. He reported that despite his attempts to work others on Turkey Mountain, he couldn’t complete any non-N0LD/r contacts. Originally, he meant to operate 6 band, but he was only able to get 5 bands working: 6m – 33cm.
Strategy we had considered trying to set another personal high score by grid circling our way through KS and OK, using the hard-won lessons we had learned in the past. However, several of our rover crew had family and personal plans, so we tried operating one vehicle on a long trip down highway 35 from MN to OKC instead.
The Route for this rover trip started in southern Minnesota – Owatonna (EN34). We spent Friday driving to Owatonna from Oklahoma City, OK – 12 hours and 727 miles! We got a solid night’s sleep and started from the NW side of the city at 1 PM on Saturday. Our route for Saturday took us from Owatonna, MN to Independence, MO. On Sunday morning we travelled to Joplin and on to Tulsa, deciding to come back home to OKC early Sunday evening. Our trip back was over 800 miles which made a personal record for our rover trips of 1500 plus miles! Two nights in hotels and a lot of gas for a suburban with wind loading makes it unlikely for us to repeat this monster venture anytime soon! We averaged 11.7 miles/gallon!
Storm Excitement! We ducked thunderstorms in Iowa Saturday afternoon – narrowly missing some 1” plus-sized hail. We threaded the needle on the storms near Story City, IA – punching the core to avoid the NEXT line of thunderstorms that shut down the Iowa – Iowa State football game in Ames. Naturally, the southern part of EN32 and the northern part of EN31 were almost a bust. The Iowa big guns were eliminated by the thunderstorms. After dinner in Des Moines, we headed south towards Kansas City only to learn that K2DRH, W0LGQ, WQ0P, and N0IRS were all off the air due to family and other priorities. We did the work of picking up everything we could despite these setbacks.
Sunday started oft slow, but had its high points. On Sunday we continued south to Joplin and despite not being able to work our friend George, AB0RX in EM47 on Iron Mountain in Missouri, we were able to make 5 bands of contacts in Wichita to KF0M. We also were pleased to find W0RT on the air as we neared Joplin and made the turn onto Highway 44 for Tulsa. Turkey Mountain, a high altitude hill in western Tulsa, is usually a high contact area, but this year we only netted a dozen or so contacts – it was clear that the beautiful Sunday weather and football had won the day for the local hams. We continued on to circle the Tulsa grid corner with our friend Nick Farlow, KB0YHT, who had made the trip solo from Wichita, KS to work his favorite rover location. Exhausted and perhaps a little travel-worn, we took an hour pizza break and decided to cut the McAlester, OK to Pauls Valley, OK part of our journey which would have added EM14 and EM24 to our worked grids – and the inevitable 6m QSOs into the Dallas region. However, we did take time to go to the water tower in Glenpool, OK and were rewarded with some of the best tropo openings of the contest to the Wichita area – thank you, WB0NRV and KF0M! We ran straight down Highway 44 to OKC and arrived by 7:30 PM. We went to the north end of Edmond on a hill and continued to work the tropo enhancement into Wichita.
Score Summary
228 QSOs, 341 Points, 68 mults, 13 grids activated, 81 total mults, 27621 points
| 66 | 69 | 31 | 42 | 18 | 2 | ||
| 50 mhz | 144 mhz | 222 mhz | 432 mhz | 902 mhz | 1296 mhz | ||
| 25 mults | 16 mults | 9 mults | 12 mults | 5 mults | 1 mults |
6m Operating provided 66 qsos – 35 of which were digital. E-Skip was fickle this trip. Two Florida contacts E-Skip contacts were made just after the storm in Iowa. And then on Saturday night eight to ten PM a smattering of west coast contacts were made for five more qsos with four new grids. Most 6m contacts were made vehicle to vehicle within 200 miles of the vehicle.
Lesson Learned – Marcus, N5ZY, listened to 6m while performing digital and noted a problem with what we believe is alternator noise. While mobile, this whine increases and thus raises our noise floor. When we stopped for gas or food/drink we invariably made more contacts. Several people told us they could hear us, but we couldn’t hear them – until we stopped! We added all the filtering we had to the power lines – we could tell the difference – but we needed more filtering. This will be addressed in the near future.
One More Lesson Learned – 1500 miles and three days is stretching fun to its limit – and we have learned to prioritize fun over score.
Operational Insight – This could have been a much higher scoring trip. The normal big guns, which are an amazingly exciting thing to a rover, were unavoidably absent this trip, all at once!
A note – my antennas might be used by other hams for rovering. I am nearing completion of a 105 ft high tower in rural Choctaw, OK, EM15ji, Cleveland county. I hope to be operating 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 70cm, and 23 cm soon!– N0LD