The temperatures were in the 20s with some wind, and six meters was even colder—as is often the case during the January VHF contest. Fortunately, some very active rovers came to the rescue of my VHF Single Op Portable operation. That, and the EM01wv location, helped me work stations around Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. Thanks, too, go to those who demonstrated great perseverance in digging my puny 10-watt signal out of the noise.
Overall Score
Saturday saw some reasonable activity, with a few stations worked on six meters. When I closed for the evening at 7 p.m., I had 48 QSOs and 34 multipliers. Sunday morning was frigid in the low 20s. I got to the location at 8:30 and set up by 9 a.m. Another 50 QSOs went into the log when I shut down just before sunset. Six meters was not very helpful. Here are the totals.
- 50 MHz – 40 QSOs and 23 grids
- 144 MHz – 30 and 15
- 432 MHz – 27 and 12
- Total – 98 QSOs and 50 multipliers, 5,750 score
Rovers Save the Day
The nice thing about the EM01wv location is that it’s near a four-corner grid junction. That means that rovers will often choose that location for circling. It worked nearly the same for me, with the rovers also stopping by for an eyeball QSO.
KA5D/R and W5TN/R managed to each put 15 QSOs in my log. Some of those were dupes as I lost track of who I’d worked from where. W5OC/R put 3 QSOs in my log. A special mention goes to K5MNZ/R, who stopped by to put EM01 in my log on all three bands with my only SSB contacts. That’s a total of 36 QSOs in my log from rovers.
Computer Update
In my previous single-op portable entries, I used a MacBook Air and MacloggerDX combined with WSJT-X. This time, I used a new Lenovo Laptop, the Windows version of WSJT-X, and N3FJP’s VHF Logger. I like that setup, but I did encounter some problems.
At one point, the laptop demanded a restart and update. This wasn’t a Windows update; I had taken care of that the week before. It was some sort of Lenovo update. That, in turn, snagged the monitor setup and demanded that the iCloud link be renewed. I sifted through all that successfully. But it did take time and raised my blood pressure a bit.
I also tried out the WSJT-X QSY messaging system. I sent a few messages, but I may have received one. That’s when WSJT crashed and wouldn’t start back up until I restarted the computer. I didn’t try messaging again after that. Another peculiarity was that you had to trigger the QSY message before logging the contact. Otherwise, the call sign will be cleared by WSJT before sending the QSY message. Hopefully, others will be better able to articulate this challenge and get a fix in the works.
Radio and Antennas
The IC-7100 worked well, running all three bands. I also set it up to listen on some of the FM simplex frequencies with a mag-mount whip. I tried that once but heard nothing. Plus, when I switched the 144/432 antenna, I forgot to turn it back for a while. That “improvement” wasn’t worth it.
I also noticed that some stations drifted a few hertz during our contact. Then I realized that it was most of them. That probably means that the IC-7100 isn’t quite as stable as I’d like it to be. I thought about the temperature, but it heated up pretty well all on its own.
The push-up mast was rock solid in the moderate wind. The M2 3-element six-meter Yagi and the Antennas-Amplifiers 144/432 combo Yagi also worked great. However, I did run into a high SWR issue on the six meters. I discovered that the connectors on the balun had vibrated loose in the wind. Once retightened, they worked fine.
Time Lapse Video
While setting up the mast and antennas, I used a tripod and iPhone to capture a time-lapse video of the effort. It misses the steps of taking the antennas off the top of the car and setting up the drive-over mast mount, but it at least provides a glimpse of the effort involved in Single Op Portable.
Thanks again for the extra effort in digging out my puny 10-watt signal. The June VHF contest should at least be warm!
