CQ WW VHF Contest 2020 — Two Grid Rover Fun

As I noted in my rover plan I activated EM24 on Saturday and EM03 on Sunday. This was in sharp contrast to my ARRL VHF rover operations where I typically activate 10 or even 11 grids. Of course, in the ARRL contests there is an additional multiplier for every grid activated, not so in the CQ contest.

Also, my goal was to help people put EM24, and to a lesser extent EM03, in their logs for the Fred Fish Memorial Award on six meters. Toward that end, instead of my usual 6 meter stressed Moxon at 12 feet on a roof top rotator, I used a 25 foot push-up mast and M2 6M-3SS Yagi. I also had a Directive Systems 2-meter 6-element rover Yagi on the mast.

Rover Push-Up Mast

I’m glad this was only a two grid rove. Set up and tear down, while everything went together ok, took considerable time and effort in the summer heat. Even so, everything worked well, even though I had to get out of the car and armstrong the beams onto the needed heading. I’m also glad that there wasn’t much wind, so guying wasn’t needed.

The two grid rover also allowed me to do more operating than driving, which was fun. I was also able to concentrate on just the two bands rather than four in the ARRL limited rover category. It would have been even more fun if six meters had opened more broadly and allowed running some stations on SSB.

Rover Messages

I did not take texts, emails, or Slack messages during the contest. CQ assistance rules don’t allow using non amateur radio means of setting up QSOs outside of scatter contacts. I did monitor DX Maps to see where to point the antenna for six meters.

I used www.contestonlinescore.com for the first time. Craig, K9CT, provided the Front Range 6 Meter Group with a VHF contesting presentation recently and introduced me to this website and how to use it. I’ve documented my experience in a separate blog post. I didn’t monitor it during the contest, but post contest review was interesting.

I spent nine hours operating, about five hours driving (450 miles), and four hours on set up and tear down. Overall, it worked well.

QSO/Grid Results

On six meters there were 68 QSOs in EM24 and 35 QSOs in EM03 with a total of 57 grids. On two meters there were 15 QSOs in EM24 and 12 QSOs in EM03 with a total of 13 grids. Total score was 10,990.

Here are breakdowns from the Contest Online Score Board.

I’ve activated EM24 in the January and June 2020 as well as the January 2019 contests. This was my best yet for getting stations in the log. Logs will soon be in Logbook of the World under call sign K5ND/R.

6 Meter Conditions

I used SDR to monitor six meters but saw no SSB QSOs on the screen. Conditions were good at times but fairly quiet overall. On Sunday I saw a few stations come in for one FT8 transmission and then they were gone. Although there was a brief opening to VE7 and VE6 that worked well for a few minutes.

The six meter conditions made the two meter QSOs all that more special. I valued having two rigs in the car along with two instances of WSJT-X running, one on each band. That way I could always monitor two meters and often ran alternating CQs.

I followed the CQ rules of only one signal on at any time since if I got confused and clicked on a signal at the same time the other rig was transmitting, the DC power shutdown. Not the best way to avoid a rule infraction…

Next Steps

Overall, I feel that my rover setup is working well. More RF power would be nice but probably not needed or at least it would only be a marginal improvement to get up to the ARRL Limited Rover specifications.

I do plan to improve the DC power setup. I’m looking at the N8XJK power booster to help there. I will note that the GPS Time Sync I just added worked great.

Thanks to everyone for their QSOs. Sorry that I wasn’t able to get everyone into the log for EM24. There will be other operations from that grid, probably as soon as the September VHF contest.

Here are the maps of the contacts I made in each grid. Mouse over to see the grid. Click on the image for a full size version.

Here’s my results. Managed to finish 12th. To do better next time I clearly need to activate more grids.