09/20/2009 | KB0HH Great Contest!! The "Midwest Rover Mania" event was fun and made operating a bit busy. We had the towers churning after every contact looking for yet another rover. We worked a total of 23 different rovers in the midwest. The ops were KC5DPT, N5VYN, K5TDN, KD0EZV, and KB0HH. We had 6 rovers stop by on their jurneys to be sociable or make repairs. The soldering iron is always hot guys .. ..

Our 222 MHz SSB rig failed early in the contest. We hooked up an FM rig with 120 Watts and still made 37 Q's in 10 grids. We had a newly refurbished 222 amp doing about 600 watts that we did not get to use .. .. Rats!

Our furthest contact was with K2DRH on 2 meters. The best contacts with rovers were KK6MC/R in DM74 and W9FZ/R in EN12. I could not believe the great signals from those guys! All contacts throughout the contest were via tropo only. There were no "E" enhancements on any band. Our score was about 100,000 points better than last year's September VHF Contest.

KB0HH either operates CW or cooks .. .. I'm sorry Bunkhouse Crew .. .. Maybe next year the SSB contacts will be louder and there will be fewer sandwiches. The position for Bunkhouse Cook is still available .. .. Send resume, pics of roving mobile .. .. and .. .. aw shucks .. .. you know the drill .. .. Pictures to follow
Gary -- KB0HH