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Expedition to the Shenandoah's VA QSO Party 2006

On March 18th, Adam, KG4VNC and I, N8YSZ Traveled to Rappahanock County in Virginia to operate during the Virginia QSO party. We operated a multi/multi portable operation with the two of us running two rigs, one for HF and the other for VHF. We received permission from W4WVP's club trustee, Dennis W4PWF to use the club's callsign for our portable operation and got a permit from the National Park Service to setup our station in the park.

We spent the couple weeks before the contest doing some minimal amount of planning. Adam and I traded a number of emails and coordinated over the internet, deciding to keep things fairly simple. We elected to go with an HF station and a VHF station. We decided to take my portable mast, a pair of 40m hamsticks with a Lakeview Hamstick Dipole Mount for the HF antenna and Adam's Elk Antenna VHF/UHF log periodic. Our power would be a set of batteries, I brought a 100ah, he brought a couple smaller 35ah ones. My Icom Icom 706 Mk IIg was the rig for HF, his Yaesu FT-8900 on VHF/UHF.

Adam picked me up a bit before 10am and we headed out towards the moutains. On the way we stopped at the Apple House restaurant just outside of Front Royal for barbeque sandwiches and then continued up to Skyline Drive. We had been told that there might be a "controlled burn" in the area we were heading to - Hogwallow Flats, but found out at the entrance gate to the park, as we were paying the park fee, that they'd called off the burn due to the windy conditions.

We arrived at Hogwallow Flats with plenty of time to setup before the contest. We elected to use the one level spot we could find, which appeared to be an old concrete slab for a trash can. It was just big enough to erect the mast upon, and allowed us to keep the mast relatively plumb. We assembled the antennas and erected the mast without issues. We only used 5 mast sections, so ended up with the antennas at about 20ft in the air. This is enough for the mast to be flexible and wobbley - we cured that by using 3 guy lines attached to stakes. Everything stayed up, even with a few good gusts of wind. See the pictures below.

Just as the contest was about to start, we got a visit from a park ranger. Adam had taken the time to get a permit ahead of time, and had communicated with the park staff on the phone, letting them know we'd be there and what we'd be doing. We also mentioned it at the gate when we entered the park. The ranger was very friendly and noted that she'd seen plenty of other hams doing the same thing - operating from the higher elevations - in the past. She did note that most folks just operated from their vehicles, rather than setting up a station as we did. After a brief conversation, she took off and let us get back to the event.

We operated from the start of the contest to about 4pm localtime. Adam operated the VHF/UHF station, I operated the HF. Both bands we activated had plenty of VA QSO activity. Adam could hear so many different stations at the same time on the 2m calling frequency, that he found it best to make a call there, directing people to QSY and call him on another frequency. I, for most of the contest, operated in "search and pounce" mode, racking up a grand total of 24 contacts. Adam more than doubled that with 50. With multipliers and bonus points, Adam computed our score at 3534pts.

During the contest we had plenty of people stop by and ask what we were doing. Some were familiar with Ham Radio, others asked if we were tracking animals or looking for UFOs. One guy asked if we were talking to the Russians. I resisted the temptation to explain that it was a bit late in the day for propogation to Russia.

The biggest trouble we had was the cold. The thermometer read in the low 40's F, which didn't seem too awful, but there was a cold, gusty wind blowing. Both of us brought warm clothes, but neither was dressed enough for sitting outside, exposed as we were. Around 4pm, we decided we'd had enough and packed up to head out. We made another stop at the Apple House for more BBQ then returned home to Arlington.


A few Pictures from the expedition.

--Brown 12:21, 20 March 2006 (EST) (N8YSZ)


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