500+ miles and 20+ hours driving and operating on Saturday, and we not only survived, but loved it!

These picture were taken with my cell phone, so they aren't very good. The photography further down was done by Jeff DeHeer with his digital camera.

Jeff DeHeer (KC8HZQ) and I put together a rover station in my Ford Festiva with several weeks of planning, and some borrowed equipment. Amazingly enough, everything went extremely well and we declared the event a smashing success. Here is an overview of our rover station:

RIGS

6 meters - Yaesu FT-620 multi-mode

2 meters - Yaesu FT-290R II multi-mode
2 meters - Icom 2m FM mobile

70 cm - Kenwood dual band HT for FM

ANTENNAS

6 meters - homebrew 'bent' dipole. The ends of the dipole are folded forward to keep it from sticking out past the car. A quarter wave section of 2 lenghts of 75 ohm coax in parallel match the 50 ohm coax to the 25 ohm feed point impedance very well. I think that the low feedpoint impedance is due to the strange shape and the fact that it is very near to a lot of metal.

2 meters - 7 element 1.6 lambda beam designed by DK7ZB for SSB when stopped.
2 meters - a simple horizontal dipole for SSB while mobile.
2 meters - a vertical 5/8 wave whip for FM.

70 cm - two vertically polarized small beams built from a radio shack antenna book, one on the mobile mast and another on the 2 meter beam mast.
70 cm - a quarter wave vertical whip for mobile omni directional FM operation.

STATION

A TV antenna rotator runs off of an inverter and sits on top of a mast that I've bolted to the back of my Festiva. We also had an inverter powering a laptop and GPS that we used for navigation and calculating grid squares. It was very useful!

HIGHLIGHTS

Highlights include working KC8RBR who was in Grand Rapids the night that we were testing our beam out, we had a nice QSO and he helped confirm that our beam actually worked!

We also had a nice QSO with W8LON who was also out on his first rover trip.

At our only stop in EN63 we decided not to raise our antennas and instead skip on to EN73 and spend more time there. While we were discussing this, we heard a station calling CQ on 2m FM and called him back. Turn out that he was over in Wisconson and didn't know that there was a contest this weekend. We helped him figure out his grid square and had a nice QSO with him! That was fun. We were both on onmi directional antennas running about 45 watts. That was cool.

Sitting on the side of US 31 at night while I tried to complete a QSO with a station on six meters who was running a Swan 250 that had a relay arcing over creating awful QRM and Jeff was trying to catch another rover station on two meters who had just moved into a new grid square making him eligable for another QSO.

The random lady that took our picture

You trying to get a ball game?

All in all, it was a lot of fun. We left at about 6 in the morning on Saturday and didn't get back until after 2:30 the next morning. We were both really exhausted but very happy. Sunday I made a few contacts on my way to Kalamazoo to activate EN 72 and get a few more QSOs. Pictures and a log to come!

THINGS LEARNED

Calling CQ DOESN'T work for a little rover station, search and pounce DOES.

You WILL get questions and strange looks!

KNOW where your antenna is pointing! Several times we became very confused on which way North was and which way our antenna was pointing.

One hour of operating time is NOT enough.

Location, location, location. With a rover station, you can pick your location, use that advantage!

Inverters create RFI.

Laptop plus GPS equals VERY USEFUL!!

Here is a map of the grid squares that we activated (blue) and the squares that we contacted (yellowish). Some of our longer contacts are indicated by the red lines.

PHOTOS

Here is our log:

START-OF-LOG: Cabrillo v2.0
CREATED-BY: KM Rover v1.6
ARRL-SECTION: GLR
CONTEST: ARRL-VHF-SEP
CALLSIGN: KC8HZM
CATEGORY: ROVER
CLAIMED-SCORE: 1144
OPERATORS: KC8HZM, KC8HZQ
QSO: 144 ssb   EN75   K2YAZ   EN74
QSO: 432 fm    EN75 K2YAZ EN74
QSO: 432 fm    EN74 K2YAZ EN74
QSO: 144 ssb   EN74 K2YAZ EN74
QSO: 144 fm    EN74 K9RN EN52
QSO: 144 fm    EN64 K9RN EN52
QSO: 432 fm    EN64 K9RN EN52
QSO:   50 ssb   EN64 K9RN EN52
QSO: 144 ssb   EN74 KB8SKP EN66
QSO: 144 ssb   EN74 KF8QL EN72
QSO: 144 ssb   EN74 K9NS EN52
QSO: 144 ssb   EN64 K9NS EN52
QSO: 144 ssb   EN64 N2BJ EN61
QSO: 144 ssb   EN64 N9NDP EN62
QSO: 144 fm    EN63 WA8RHS EN63
QSO: 144 ssb   EN63 W8LON EN63
QSO:   50 ssb   EN63 WA8YLZ EN63
QSO: 144 ssb   EN63 W8LON/R EN63
QSO: 144 fm    EN63 WA8YLZ EN63
QSO: 144 ssb   EN63 W8LON/R EN64
QSO: 144 ssb   EN63 K9RN EN52
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 WB9Z EN60
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 W9GA EN53
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 K8MD EN82
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 K9NS EN52
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 K9DQ EN62
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 KF8QL EN72
QSO: 432 fm    EN73 KF8QL EN72
QSO:   50 ssb   EN73 KF8QL EN72
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 KE8RO EN81
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 W8LON/R EN64
QSO: 144 ssb   EN73 KC8RBR EN73
QSO: 144 ssb   EN72 KF8QL EN72
QSO: 432 fm    EN72 KF8QL EN72
QSO:   50 ssb   EN72 KF8QL EN72
QSO: 144 fm    EN72 KI8JD EN72
QSO:   50 ssb   EN72 K8CC EN82
QSO: 144 ssb   EN72 W9ATU EN72
QSO: 144 ssb   EN72 K9NS EN52
END-OF-LOG:

I have done some antenna modelling trying to get a better idea of how our six meter antenna actually radiates. It turns out that it is quite limited by the height. Because it was so low, almost all of our radiated energy went straight up! That is probably a large reason why we heard so little.

Our priorities are #1) better antennas, #2) more bands, and #3) more power in that order.

I will be working on finding someway to get a six meter dipole up at least 2 meters. It should have a much lower angle of maximum radiation if we can get it up past 2 meters.

I think that for 2 meter mobile SSB, I will be building a full length loop, mounted vertically and fed at the bottom for horizontal polarization.

We definitely need some sort of tilt up mast, teetering around while standing the roof of my car trying to balance a 8 foot long beam and rotator isn't fun!