I'm a Rover!

Background

It started when on December 27th, just two days after Christmas, I received a call from ham radio wizard and 25 year-long friend Wayne Overbeck, N6NB, asking if I could “come out and play.” Play radio, that is.

Wayne and I have known each other since 1979, when we met back in New Jersey, and we’ve kept in frequent touch. Since we now live about seventy miles apart, we don’t see each other all that often, but our meetings are always interesting. This was going to be one of the more interesting meetings.

It seems that having done about everything there is to do in ham radio, from moonbounce to 160 meter DXing, to working contests from most States and a few countries, to setting up mobile, kilowatt-level multiband stations and driving them thousands of miles, to setting up a mountaintop ham station in an isolated area of southern California simply to enjoy the pleasure of operating without local QRN, QRM or neighbors – to you name it – Wayne recently became interested in VHF-UHF “Roving.” Roving is a very active sport in VHF-UHF-Microwaves, and a vital part of most contesting on these shortest wavelengths of all amateur bands. It involves installing operational stations in driving vehicles, and driving the stations to various locations to contact other stations either doing the same thing, or stations operating from fixed home or portable locations (doesn’t matter), to see how exhausted and broke you can become from such activity. (Activity = “foolishness” for most who have no interest in this or have never experienced it.)

This is a shot of Wayne, N6NB (left) and me, taken by John, N6MU prior to launching our “ring around the rosy” escapade of December 28th, 2003.

Never one to do anything small-scale, Wayne put together a ten-band VHF-UHF-Microwave Rover station in his van, equipping the vehicle with transceivers, five UHF-SHF transverters, ten permanently mounted antennas with two rotors, plus one removable tall mast for 6m/2m beams on another rotor, kilowatt amplifiers for 50 and 144 MHz, a gasoline power generator, DC to AC power inverter to operate rotors without the generator, driving positions for two, operating position for one, and sleeping provisions for one or two. This rolling antenna farm is more extensive, and better, than what many amateurs have at home – or ever will have at home.

He started using this station in January 2003 (the ARRL VHF Sweepstakes) with some success as a single Rover (meaning, working and “roving” alone), after driving the 10-band station to the East Coast, a little 6500 mile round-trip. Wayne then built a second 10-band rolling VHF-UHF-SHF station into an SUV in time for the ARRL September VHF QSO Party. This time, his “Rover” partner, in the second vehicle, was John, N6MU. The two of them, plus a non-ham named Rob who’s a sports rally driver and could contribute some fancy driving skills to the party, “roved” to many grids in California in the September contest and achieved scores of more than 300,000 points each: Not a small feat for any VHF contest, and a rather amazing one for a Rover.

So much for background. By the way, if you’d like to view what Wayne and John did in the September 2003 contest, a lot of that is on Wayne’s website, http://www.n6nb.com

The wind-up, and the pitch

I agreed to be part of an experiment to see what would happen if not two, but three similarly-equipped Rovers drove in circles to work each other from various grids. Of course this could be done, but Wayne wanted to determine how much additional time it takes “per grid intersection” or “per 4-grid convergence” (where four grid squares come together) for not two, but three rolling stations to work each other from every possible combination of grids on all ten bands. Silly me, I thought this would be easy.

When I rolled up to Wayne’s house on Sunday morning, December 28th, what I saw was astonishing: Three vehicles, including one van and two SUVs, equipped with more than thirty antennas (many rotary gain antennas, complete with rotors) for ten bands, were calmly parked in his driveway. Doesn’t everybody have this stuff? Wayne was nowhere to be seen. It turns out he was in the shower, inside the house, having just awakened a few minutes earlier – because he was up the entire night before re-wiring and re-configuring the gear in the van. -- Typical Wayne stuff.

The Explorer, Rodeo and van neatly lined up in the N6NB driveway, ready for a 10-band Chinese Fire Drill.

I immediately begged for the keys to the locked vehicles, so I could take my own tour of the gear stacked up inside each. What I found was amazing: Ten bands, 50 MHz through 10.368 GHz, using various types of equipment from different generations, all set up and operational in each vehicle. The van, being the largest vehicle, has a “radio shack” setup midships, with two transceivers, three rotor controls, and five UHF-SHF transverters. The transceivers are from Yaesu, an FT-736R set up for 144/222/432/1296 MHz, and an FT-100D set up for 50 MHz and to use as a tunable I.F. for the transverters operating on 902, 2.3 GHz, 3.4 GHz, 5.7 GHz and 10.3 GHz. Those items have feedlines exiting the rear of the van and attached to rooftop antennas for all ten bands, with rotary gain antennas for most. The van also has sleeping accommodations and will accept a gasoline generator and the kilowatt amplifiers for various bands when working a real contest; but the generator and amps were left in Wayne’s garage for our local outing.

The midships van operating position with FT-736R (4-bands), FT100D (50 MHz, plus 144 MHz IF for five transverters) and three Yaesu rotor controls.

The two SUVs sport operating positions that are also the “driver’s seat” in each, so the driver/operator need never move from the driving position to operate ten bands’ worth of gear. In the Ford Explorer is an Icom IC-706MK2G set up to operate 50 MHz as well as be the tunable I.F. stage for transverters on 902 MHz, 2.3 GHz and the “higher bands;” as well as an Icom IC-910H set up for 144-432-1296 MHz, and a Midland 13-513 25W FM transceiver for 222 MHz. Band changing involves picking up a different microphone, switching the transverter selector switches (a DC switch for the relay/PTT line and an RF switch for the 144 MHz I.F. connection), and “tuning around” to find the station for contacts on the bands above 902 MHz, since the transverter local oscillators aren’t all that stable. I know this well, since I became the driver/operator of this contraption.

The front-seat shack of N6NB Rover #3, inside the Isuzu Rodeo: A mix of gear, including SSB Electronic and Down East Microwave UHF-SHF transverters, Icom and Yaesu transceivers, and Yaesu rotor control.

The latest addition to the N6NB three-vehicle Rover system is one Wayne just picked up on a trip to the east coast last summer, and it’s an Isuzu Rodeo SUV that is now equipped for ten bands, with ten antennas, as well. This one uses a different mix of equipment, but performs the same functions as the stations in the Explorer. You can see the “coax entry point” for the Rodeo, which is representative of all three vehicles, below:

With three vehicles equipped for 10-band roving, one might ask, “Where’s the family car?” To that, I have no answer. However, despite the rather permanent-looking station setups, I’ve seen Wayne drive the Explorer without any of this stuff installed, and without any of the antennas mounted, so I believe that is considered the “family car.” Complete with antenna rotor. (Wayne has since advised either of the SUVs can be converted to “family car” in less than one hour; once feedlines are disconnected, the antenna systems lift off the roof and the console lifts out of the vehicle with most of the gear still in place.)

I’d never even attempted to rove on one band before, let alone ten, so this was right up my alley. As I said to Wayne, “You’ve got me interested, now. Just add ‘this could easily kill you’ and you know I’m right there.” Nobody loves a challenge more than I do, except possibly Wayne. I said I’d be glad to drive the third station, at least for this test.

The lay of the land

“How many points can you make, doing this roving thing, anyhow?” I naively asked Wayne. “I think one million points or more is possible, if we can get to enough grids, just working each other and without making a single other contact with outside stations” was the reply. (See Note 1.) -- A million points? Really? I used to bust my buns in the January VHF Sweepstakes many years ago, repeatedly, to score a fraction of that from home, using kilowatts on several bands and large antennas on towers.

Then, Wayne reminded me that every time a Rover relocates to a new grid, he can work the same stations he’d already worked, again. And there are numerous four-grid convergences reasonably close to Interstate 5, which runs the entire length of California and which is all usually navigable 365 days a year, unlike the roads elsewhere in the country. Three Rovers “circling” a 4-grid convergence, and working only each other in every possible grid and band combination would result in a walloping 58,880 points: 32 contacts per band, at a total of 40 grid multipliers, using the “points per QSO” formula allowed by the ARRL for this contest yields 1,472 QSO points x 40 grids = 58,880. That’s the points each Rover would score from a single 4-grid convergence, if contacts are made successfully on all ten bands for each of us.

Now, stretch this to the max. If we could cross a few 2-grid borders and reach four 4-grid convergences, a million points seemed possible. But it’s a lot of driving, and a lot of very fast operating. No time to dawdle around smelling the roses. It’s park, make 20 contacts, roll a while, park, make 20 contacts, roll a while, park, make 20 contacts... with a lot of relocations at each convergence. Many convergences are in the middle of nowhere, and the nearest roads might be too far to easily “circle the wagons” to pull this off.

Wayne leaves little to chance, though, and had already mapped out or personally visited all the grid convergences planned. Unfortunately, while some of the grids we’d need to visit to realize the “million point dream” are pretty rare, and thus we’d be very much in demand by other (regular contest) operators, in many cases, we’d be in horrible locations such as deep valleys between mountains, where the likelihood of actually working anybody on the bands above maybe 144 MHz could be pretty slim.

It sounds easy to park, pick up a few different microphones and throw a few switches, and make contacts quickly – and it is, for an experienced VHF contester. It isn’t for almost anyone else. Reason is all the gear is finicky; the UHF-SHF transverters drift in frequency and antenna steering is extremely critical on the higher bands, where antenna beamwidths are very narrow and path losses astronomical. On 10.3 GHz, just because you can see the other station, doesn’t mean you can work him! It’s a bit like using flashlights – or maybe closer to using LASER pointers.

To compound these problems, try driving a vehicle that’s more than ten feet tall (because of all the antennas) and cannot be parked just anywhere. Many opportunities to pull over must be passed over due to tree limbs being too low and in the way. And if you park in a place that is not truly line-of-sight to the other Rover stations, you may not know where to aim those narrow beamwidth antennas. The time left for actually making contacts in time to get roving again is about five or ten seconds per band per location, or the million-point miracle just isn’t going to happen.

For the December 28th experiment, it was too far to drive to a real 4-grid convergence, so we drove to a 4-“mini”grid convergence, instead. This is where four six-digit grid squares converge: DM13CQ, DM13CR, DM13DQ and DM13DR. There happened to be a “mini-“grid convergence in Irvine, CA, only about five miles from Wayne’s house, and that was good enough to test the plan.

Wayne had plotted on a map exactly where the convergence was, and luckily, it’s very close to the intersection of two fairly rural roads with a traffic light but little traffic. In daylight, it wasn’t difficult to “see” from one “grid” into the next, by just pulling over and parking a couple of hundred yards apart. At night, this would have been much more of a challenge. For the real thing, we’d better bring searchlights. Of course, all the light in the world won’t solve the problem of a hill between the grids and rover stations, as on the bands above about 3 GHz even a hill is quite a major obstacle to low-powered communications. The Irvine “mini”-grid convergence was flat as a pancake.

The race is on

The race got off to a crawl, as we stopped at McDonald’s for lunch. Hey, this isn’t a real contest, so we had the time.

But when we got rolling, we had Wayne operating in the van being piloted by his non-ham friend Rob; John, N6MU piloting the Isuzu and operating its stations as well; and me piloting the Explorer and also operating, with the able assistance of John, N6QQ in the back seat who was pretty much along for the ride. I did appreciate John’s assistance in two matters, though: He knew the area better than I did, and he logged the frequency offsets of the various UHF transverters so I’d know about where to tune for Wayne and John as we jumped bands. John’s also been a ham for a zillion years, and a DXer and contester who’s operated from lots of DX locations, so his stories were enjoyable, too! Here’s a shot of N6QQ, N6MU and N6NB (left to right) ready to hit the road (I was behind the camera):

Sound like fun?

For me, the tricky part was remembering what the heck grid I was in each time, since for some reason there aren’t any grid square indicators alongside the roads, at intersections. I was kind of hoping there would be.

After two hours, we each had logged (well, I wasn’t actually writing any of this down, so my log was in my head) 320 QSOs in 40 “grids” (well, “mini”-grids). Here’s how the scoring goes in the January VHF Sweepstakes:
50 & 144 MHz contacts count 1 point each.
220 & 432 MHz contacts count 2 points each.
902 & 1296 MHz contacts count 4 points each.
The “higher bands” (2304 MHz and above) count 8 points each.

Thus, the 320 QSOs yield 1472 QSO points. That, times 40 grids, is 58,880 points, and this would represent each of our scores from the first “round robin.” That’s more points than many stations make in the entire contest, operating for two days straight. And we did it (or simulated doing it) without contacting anybody other than each other!

Sticky wickets

Some might say this is “cheating,” somehow, but of course it isn’t. There’s a “Rover” category in the contest, and Rovers are not directly in competition with home stations. Further, there are lots of categories in most contests, including this one: Single operator, multi-operator, different power level categories, single-band and multi-band categories. Someone who spends 363 days a year building up his VHF-UHF station might be very disappointed to be beaten out by a guy in a car with what are essentially ten mobile rigs, but he shouldn’t feel that way.

For a variety of good reasons, Wayne has equipped the van station, at least, with larger rotary antennas (including 3 elements at about 25’ on six meters) that can be erected very quickly if desired, as well as the KW amplifiers and generator, to help assure at least that rover station can easily make contacts outside the “three of us.” This will make some other hams very happy, as they’ll be able to work some new grids, and will also help justify the whole operation – not to mention help convince people we really did go to the places we say we did.

But even the other two rover stations in the SUVs can run 100W output each on 6m and 2m, and enough power on 222 and 432 MHz to make routine contacts outside “the group.” Don’t know how successful we’d be making 10.3 GHz contacts outside the group, but it will be fun to find out.

A “sticky wicket” for sure for anyone wishing to duplicate what Wayne’s done is that it takes time, technical expertise, dedication – and money. -- Quite a lot of all four, too. Considering the KW amps are homebrewed, as are the control boxes, and many of the antennas, the relay switching systems and so forth...it’s still a pretty big investment. It’s the kind of investment that most would probably spread over several years, but Wayne started in January ’03 and finished in December ’03. That’s Wayne.

You might note in the photographs that some of the antennas are unconventional looking. Wayne used a combination of loops and halos, yagis and quads, helices and horns to cover the ten bands for each vehicle. The quads and helices are all homebrew, and two of the rotary antennas are actually 3-band VHF-UHF quads Wayne built to cover 144-222-432 MHz. I know of nothing like that on the market. Maybe Wayne can recover some of his Rover expenses by going into business selling that model! He used quads rather than yagis for the homebrewed directional antennas because on the higher bands water droplets that might accumulate on them if it rains less easily detune quads. Even in California, it does rain, and mostly in the winter.

Conclusions?

Well, the Maiden Voyage 3-rover workout did divulge a few station weaknesses, and for that we are very glad. The Explorer station I was driving had two problems, one with a very drifty L.O. in the 902 MHz transverter (it jumped 180 kHz up the band!), and one with a relay on the IC-706 that keyed with modulation when using the IC-910H at 100W on two meter SSB. That was a weird one, hope Wayne’s fixed that by now.

The van station developed a high input VSWR on one of the SHF transverters, although the rig did continue to work.

I determined personally that I wouldn’t pick an FT100D or an IC706MK2G for serious use with VHF-UHF transverters. Both rather user-unfriendly rigs that take too much fuss to make rapid changes as required when jumping bands and modes. In non-contest situations with a lot of leisure time, none of this would matter; but when you have about one second to make a band and mode change, and then have to tune around to find the other station, it does matter.

Wayne discovered that when an FT-736R “locks up” and won’t change frequency or VFOs or anything else, simply turning it off and then back on fixes it. Like re-booting a computer. Rigs sure have become complex over the years...

Slowing us down somewhat (our exercise, while consuming two hours of actually roving and operating, actually consumed 2-1/2 hours in total) were some human elements: A young lady with a nearly flat tire stopped to ask for help in this semi-rural area – we accommodated her with the loan of a cell phone, but she didn’t have a spare tire. Also, a policeman in a patrol car stopped to ask us what the heck we were doing, as he did have a report of three trucks circling the area for hours. John explained, and the cop said, “Well, you’re not doing anything wrong, so have fun!” and that was about it. But these incidents do consume precious time, and I’d hope not to have them during an actual contest.

I agreed to take part in this exercise, but didn’t plan to actually take part as a Rover in the upcoming contest. That would take three full days at least, setting up for the first location on Saturday, driving to the very final location on Sunday night about 700 miles north of here, and then taking all day Monday to drive back home again. I didn’t agree to that. But then, Wayne had to throw in, “And this could easily kill you,” and I’m mightily tempted.

The real reason for this story is to convince others, including those burdened by CC&Rs or other restrictions that make home station operation difficult, to get into “Roving!” Obviously, not many will do what Wayne’s done, but a single “rover” assembled in the family car and taken for a long spin on weekends isn’t too much and can result in an awful lot of fun.

Next time you hear “N6NB 59 CN90” and it sounds like he’s talking to himself: He’s not. Be assured there are two other guys out there, probably nearby, completing contacts in an attempt to achieve the miracle million-point score....

WB2WIK/6

Note 1. Wayne has emphasized to me on more than one occasion that he and his group definitely intend to work “other” stations outside the “rover group” discussed, and the more, the better. This is in keeping with the spirit of the contest, and will also ramp everyone’s scores higher – including those in the rover group. A serious effort will be made in all contests to make as many contacts as possible, both within and outside the rover group.

Note 2. Since this was written, Wayne’s purchased still another SUV, this one a new Subaru, and is busily equipping it for roving, as well. He’s got six bands (50 through 1296 MHz) already done, and hopes to add the remaining four microwave bands shortly! -- Anyone for a long drive?

Post Script: The “million-point miracle” did, indeed, occur. N6NB, with fellow rovers N6MU and N6MI, put on 1275 miles each during the January VHF SS (January 24-25, 2004) and all three broke 1 million points, with Wayne’s score topping the list at a staggering 1,095,480 points (since he worked the most “other” stations, with the big van station). This is about double the previous January VHF SS record, and sets the bar higher for those wishing to really compete. I’m adding this note on January 27, only a few hours after the return of the record-breaking Rovers.