ARRL VHF Contest June 2006 Rover Trip Report

 

This was a rover effort jointly with N7EPD this year. It was nice to have him along. I usually do these long trips solo. His sharp ears and CW proficiency netted us a chance contact from a mountaintop in DN09 to KI7JA/P operating 2M QRP from CN94 mountain top.

Our route started in Seattle, headed north through CN87, CN88, CN89, CN99, and DN09 (Mt. Kobau Fire Lookout eastern British Columbia) for the night. The eastward path through CN89/99/DN09 only had a view westward keeping the first days QSO count to only 70. At one mountain lookout in the CN99 BC Cascades we did manage to squeeze out a 2M CW QSO back into Seattle to work W7FI.

The second day we continued south in Eastern BC, Eastern WA, to Tunk Mtn Fire Lookout in DN08, and Lake Chelan in CN98. The forest road was snow blocked at 6000ft so we doubled back 15 miles, on the way slicing open a tire on forest road just 2 hours before the end of the contest with 3 more grids to activate and make Chelan Butte in CN97 by 7:15pm.

Tire fixed, we hit the highway, 6M opened up and we had a great shot southward the whole way, crossing CN98/DN08/DN07/CN97, working stations as fast as we could log them, crossing grids and reworking many of the stations minutes later.

We reached Chelan Butte in CN97 with a nice 360 degree view of eastern Washington, Lake Chelan, and lots of contacts. We ended up with 188 QSOs mostly operating the remote mountains and eastern side of Washington and BC.

While we were equipped with all bands from 6M though 10GHz, we made no contacts on 903MHz, only 1 in 1296MHz (amplifier power got kicked off for 2 attempts), and nothing above 2.4GHz could be made - we were pretty isolated. The high bands were definitely tough to get this year but the scenery was worth it. Looking a the results below you can see 6M was the usual utility band, and despite being in some similar locations last year, we were able to log a few more grids this year. We ran 120W or less on all bands into yagis on the truck, except for 6M which used a 6M KB6KQ loop antenna.

The antenna setup:

Top to bottom: 6M loop,  2M 7el yagi, 1296 loop yagi, then on the bottom row was the 222 yagi, 432 yagi, 903 loop yagi .  The front support masts are solid 1.25" fiberglass rod.   The rear is a hitch mounted 6061 thick wall pipe.  I have a heavy duty roof rack mounted support channel running the length of the roof that I can put brackets onto without damaging the roof.  

The pictures below are in the order of each site visited as I worked my way clockwise around the state.  It ends at Chelan Butte, and starts in Western BC.

Click on any picture for a full size view.