06/13/2006 | N8UM As usual, weather dictated a large part of my rover operations. I had planned to spend all day Saturday and Saturday night trying out a new site in EM76 but thunderstorms drove me off the mountain after 2 hours (see first photo). 6 meters was red hot and allowed for over 130 contacts. I got the rate meter on the CT logging program up to 170 QSOs per hour based on 10 minute sampling. As everyone else has reported, there was virtually no 144 mhz and up activity while 6 was open. I did however complete with WB4WEN in Virginia on all bands through 2304. Drove off with 142 Q's

Thanks to Brian, ND3F, for convincing me that the mountainmobile vehicle had to deploy and stow in less than ten minutes! That allowed me to dodge the storms.

My second site in EM75 is only 1100 ft elevation, but again 6 meters was so hot Saturday night that it didnt make any difference. Another 68 Qs in an hour were booked using the 2 element Moxon and 150 watts. The antenna is 22 ft. off the rear of the Astro.

I returned to my old reliable site on the Foothills Parkway in EM85 (Tennessee) on Sunday morning and worked a few multipliers on 144 and up until 6 opened again at noon. Propagation was sporadic on 6 in late afternoon, but did produce some long haul Qs including VE6TA on 6 m cw. Another 90 Qs on six.

I had rebuilt the rover setup in the Astro and labored all spring resolving RFI problems. Everything worked flawlessly and the new NCS switching boxes allowed me to listen on 2 bands while transmitting on a third. Cool!

I ended up with about 370 Qs as a 3 grid rover with about 13 hours of actual operation. My 903, 1296 and 2304 rigs are all working well. Now if we could only generate more microwave activity here in the Southeast -- N8UM