ARRL January 2019 VHF Contest — K5ND/R Route

I’ve been giving some thought to a revised rover route for the ARRL January VHF Contest. For the previous September contest I started on the northwest side of Fort Worth and worked my way south on Saturday. This time I’m going to start on the southwest side.

My thinking is that most of my contacts come from the Austin, San Antonio, and Houston areas. Plus, that’s where most of the rovers are operating. So I want to be loud for them at the beginning of the contest, providing new grids, and in that way getting them to look for me the rest of the contest. We’ll see how that works.

On Sunday, I’m extending my route into Oklahoma for grids EM24 and EM14. I’m hopeful that I’ll still have enough energy late Sunday to make this happen. This should give me improved reach into Oklahoma City and even Wichita as well as allow me to work some of the Oklahoma rovers. Again, we’ll see how that works.

Here’s the planned route and schedule. A fair bit of driving time packed into this route.

Saturday Route

• 1:00 PM — EM11dv
• 2:30 PM — EM01wv
• 5:00 PM — EM02xt
• 7:00 PM — EM03xe
• 8:30 PM — EM13ae

Sunday Route

• 8:00 AM — EM12va
• 9:30 AM — EM21ax
• 1:00 PM — EM22ax
• 2:30 PM — EM23aa
• 6:00 PM — EM24ca
• 7:30 PM — EM14wa or EM14ca

I’ll be running with 100 watts on 6 and 2 meters, 75 watts on 70 cm using SSB, FT8, and MSK144 along with CW when needed. Antennas will be on my roof top mount with 6 meter stressed moxon, 2 meter 6-element DSE Rover Yagi, and 70 cm 15-element DSE Rover Yagi.

Hope to find you on the bands during the contest from all the grids and bands.

Here are the maps: