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January VHF Sweepstakes, the KI5DR/r story
Well, after my June VHF effort as Rover for the VHF contest (and subsequent fuel pump failure of my 1998 minivan) I wanted to "Give it another shot" as Rover. What inspired this also was an article I found outlining construction details of a 2-element X-beam for 6m. In addition, I had read some postings on some really inexpensive (CHEAP) high-gain yagis, and wanted to experiment more with this. Earlier in January I did a presentation at the WCARC club meeting on my travels for the June contest, and encouraged everyone to get on 2m FM simplex even if they did not have SSB gear. The biggest problem with operating VHF contests in Central Texas is the lack of stations to work, so I was hoping to generate some interest and some more activity on the bands. I had a very nice UHF long-boom yagi donated to my cause by George, K5TR. This was to replace the short 11el Cushcraft I used previously. My plan is to add more power to my 20w UHF station, but until then, adding the 17el yagi worked very nicely. Last week I built the X-beam out of PVC and wire based on the specs on the Internet. This time around, however, I decided to put together a rack out of 1.5" PVC instead of the 2x4 wooden rack from last year. The wooden rack was really heavy (70 lbs) and the PVC rack was very light - 15lbs. Plus, the old wooden rack was in the back yard all summer, and looked kinda Nasty. After assembling the rack and X-beam, I didn't have the chance to test the antennas until Friday night before the contest. The X-beam would not load, even with the tuner. (The UHF yagi worked fine) I decided to go with my backup plan for 6m - the Dipole, and mounted everything to the roof of the Windstar. Since everything was mounted directly to the rack, I simply used a Rack-And-Pinion rotor (turned the van in the direction I wanted). This worked out very well, and was less complex than adding rotors, 120VAC converters, rotor control cables, etc. Saturday morning - Breakfast with the crew at Denny's. Everyone marveled at the feat of engineering excellence (sic)! It was not much to look at, but I hoped it would do the job. The plan was to drive out to EL19 to a scenic overlook between La Grange and Bastrop Texas.
1:00pm local time, the contest starts! I work mostly stations from the Austin area, but do not hear anything coming from Houston or Dallas. After an hour, I pulled out of the rest stop and headed for San Antonio, then down to Corpus Christi, then back to Houston as my final destination for the evening. Everything was working fine until, about 30 miles outside of SA, everything collapsed!
Well, that's just a testament to my crappy PVC pipe-gluing skills! I think it was partly due to the cold weather when I glued the rack, and the constant buffeting from 65+mph winds. I managed to re-assemble pieces of the rack, enough to re-mount the antennas and continue on my journey, but this whole process took around 45 minutes. I made my way towards Corpus (through EL09, EL08, EL18 and EL17) in time to meet up with Reid KC5YKX for dinner, then continued on up through EL18 towards Houston. Some where in-between Victoria and Wharton, the remaining pieces of the rack again blew off the roof, and I ended up loading everything into the back of the van and trucking on to my destination. Sunday morning I awoke and decided to continue instead of scrapping the whole project and going home.
After the rebuild, I headed North through downtown Houston towards Dallas. The worst part of the trip was the general lack of activity in Houston - I believe I only worked 2 stations from EL29. Also, I NEVER worked anyone from Dallas / Ft. Worth. I missed EM11, EM12, EM13 - I heard a couple of stations on, and called but never got replies. The rest of the day was not as eventful. The rack held up, I made my way up I-45 and decided to turn left in Centerville to make it back to Austin by the end ofthe contest. The only way for me to know what was happening on the rack was to check out my shadow... Back in June I got a lot of looks from people staring at my antennas. However, Centerville was hosting some kind of hunter's fest, and I just happened to fit right in here! I should have taken more photos, but did at least get some pretty good pics.
Back to the drawing board! |
