Station #3 - Myself (KS6DAY) and new member Robert O'Brien (KN6UUR) were stationed here at the Rocky Hill curve before the final big hill.
I brought my Comet GP-1 antenna, but I wanted to try out this much lighter and more portable NMO mount Nagoya vehicle mobile antenna with a ground plane kit. It worked very well.
A view of my fabricated "Go Box". The rig is a TYT TH-7800 50w 2m/70cm mobile in an Apache 2800 case (Which is a little smaller than the 3800 that most people usually use for this purpose). Power input is ported via a powerpole bulkhead socket. The antenna connection is also bulkhead ported. It's a minimalist rig but proved to be exactly what I was going for. Power was supplied via my self-fabricated power box that has a 13 amp hour battery. It was more than sufficient for the event. But, just in case, I also brought along another power box with a sizeable deep cycle marine battery. One improvement will be to add some rubber non skid material to the bottom of the case. The blanket is there for that purpose as the table wasn't level and the case kept sliding off the slick table.
A closer look at the box. Note the binoculars. They are very useful for these type events.
Nice view! I can think of worse ways to spend a Saturday morning.
Overall, the event ended up going fairly well. However, it got off to a rough start and we have a lot of work to do, as a club, towards establishing some SOP's for future events. I will be bringing this up at the next club meeting and looking to establish a committee to develop these SOP's and then deliver some training sessions in the future.
Many thanks to all who attended.
