Just another reason why I love amateur radio!<\/em>)<\/p>\nKA BOOM!<\/h4>\n
Mid afternoon the rain started picking up, and we could hear static crashes on the radio, a sign of the approaching lightning. \u00a0Dave and Dennis shut down and I kept operating as I had a minor run going on 20m. \u00a0Then the hail started falling, and it sounded as if 40 people were on the roof of the RV, all hitting the roof with hammers. \u00a0I looked out the window and marble sized hail was starting to fall. \u00a0Having never been in my RV during a hail storm, it was an interesting experience. \u00a0It was very loud and very interesting to see the hail bouncing all over the ground. \u00a0The storm didn\u2019t seem to effect the band conditions other than adding a ton of static crashes on 20. \u00a0As 20 meters started to die off with activity, I flipped over to 80 meters to see what the band conditions were like, knowing that Dennis or Dave would be on 40m. \u00a0 Wow.. Static crashes that were S9+20 were wiping out all but the strongest signals on the band. Those that I could hear were having round table rag chew conversations, and I could not find another voice station that was contesting on the band.<\/p>\n
I tried to calling through most of it until I could see lightning, (well off in the distance<\/em>) and at that point I decided to shut down for a while and just enjoy the show provided by mother nature. \u00a0Seeing lighting over the valley from the rim is pretty amazing. \u00a0One of the reasons is that the lighting wasn\u2019t coming from above you, it was almost at the same height as you\u00a0 –\u00a0 so you as you look straight out over the rim, or even down a little to see the lighting exit from the base of the clouds.<\/p>\nA time lapse camera up there to record a valley storm would be epic.<\/p>\n
An hour or so later (it was now close to 8 PM), the lightning had moved to the west and I got back on 20 with the goal of ending at 300 Qs that night on 20. \u00a0I was clawing and scratching for the last 10.. Finally making it to 300, working a strong VE7 station. \u00a0When I left the RV there was a chill in the air, and the temperature gauge was reading 54 degrees inside the RV and 44 degrees outside. \u00a0I shut off the rig and headed out of the motor home to check on the rest of the crew, only to find them all hanging out talking in the \u201cbro-ham\u201d, which was about 80 degrees from the heat of the oven and all the bodies in the space talking. \u00a0Come to find out, it was almost time for the evening sugar infusion of the cherry dump cake and ice-cream.<\/p>\n
That was a real treat to have up here on the rim. \u00a0I have to say, these 7 landers know how to eat when camping \u2013 a far cry from what I was used to eating back in 1 land with cold cans of beans and sandwiches. \u00a0\u00a0Dennis had made the dump cake by hand, and accompanied the creation with ice cream.\u00a0 It was a terrific meal with great company. \u00a0Soon after I finished I graciously thanked Dennis and headed back to the motor home to try to get at least another 2 hours of solid contesting on 80 meters. \u00a0As I stepped outside it started raining harder, so I jogged over to the MH and jumped in \u2013 to the entire area lighting up as if it was daylight \u2013 and a second later..<\/p>\n
KAAAAAAAA__BOOOOOOOOOOM!<\/strong><\/p>\nTo this point, I had never been in the RV when it actually moved from the sonic rapport of a thunder clap. \u00a0I now can say I have. \u00a0That strike was close. \u00a0\u00a0I reached behind the FT-1200, disconnected the antenna feedline and threw it out the window. \u00a0\u00a0So much for operating the rest of the evening, my session was over for Saturday night.\u00a0 I prepared the coffee percolator for the morning and hit the sack.<\/p>\n
Sunday early start<\/h4>\n
The start time for the QSO Party on Sunday came very early, 7 AM. \u00a0I quickly made breakfast (eggs and fruit) plus hot percolated coffee, and started to work stations. \u00a0There were plenty of stations on the bands, however, the conditions were strange. \u00a0Signals would be S9+ then drop to zero. \u00a0\u00a0I could hear plenty of activity on the bands, audio was clear however, signal levels were all S2-S3 on the meter. When Dave would operate CW on the same band, he would trash the stations.\u00a0 Yesterday I could work around the CW, as the signals were much stronger. Today there were completely lost when the CW key was sending. \u00a0\u00a0 A lot of atmospheric noise was also on the bands. \u00a0My goal of 500 QSOs for the weekend was looking like it would not be possible.<\/p>\n
By 10 AM it sounded as if there was a Faraday cage parked right over us. \u00a0I could spin the dial on 20 meters and only pick up 1, maybe 2 very very weak signals. \u00a0Flipping to 40 meters, I was hearing reports all over California and Texas that they were not able to hear anyone – the same conditions we were facing. \u00a0I tried to stay active until 11 am, spinning the dial and only picking up 2 stations across the entire band. \u00a0By 10:40 AM I had checked out mentally, and called it quits by 11, a full 6 hours early on the contest. \u00a0We all determined it would be better to get torn down and on the road now, then deal with traffic in Payson later in the day.<\/p>\n
Dennis and I poked fun at Dave for a bit\u2026 (are you done yet?? Are you done yet??<\/em>) as he closed up his camper and hitched it up to the truck (all in good fun Dave<\/em>) and then we departed for the valley.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
All in all we ended with:<\/p>\n
Total Contacts = 444\r\n Total Points = 31,808\r\n\r\n Operating Period: 2016\/10\/08 16:02 - 2016\/10\/09 17:17\r\n\r\n\r\n Total Contacts by Band and Mode:\r\n\r\n Band CW Phone Dig Total %\r\n ---- -- ----- --- ----- ---\r\n 40 1 51 0 52 12\r\n 20 3 371 0 374 84\r\n 15 0 15 0 15 3\r\n 10 0 1 0 1 0\r\n 2 0 2 0 2 0\r\n -- ----- --- ----- ---\r\n Total 4 440 0 444 100\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\nWorking all states except for three:
\nVermont, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
\nIt was interesting to see which states we had the most QSOs, considering the PA QSO party was also going on the same weekend, I expected that number to be higher, however, conditions didn’t support it.<\/p>\n
Total Contacts by State \\ Prov:\r\n\r\n State Total %\r\n ----- ----- ---\r\n WA 52 12\r\n CA 51 11\r\n TX 49 11\r\n OR 27 6\r\n AZ 20 5\r\n GA 14 3\r\n MI 13 3\r\n KS 12 3\r\n OH 10 2\r\n OK 10 2\r\n BC 9 2\r\n IL 9 2\r\n WI 9 2\r\n AL 8 2\r\n AR 8 2\r\n MT 8 2\r\n VA 8 2\r\n CO 7 2\r\n NC 7 2\r\n NE 7 2\r\n KY 6 1\r\n MN 6 1\r\n NY 6 1\r\n PA 6 1\r\n SD 6 1\r\n FL 5 1\r\n LA 5 1\r\n MO 5 1\r\n TN 5 1\r\n IA 4 1\r\n MS 4 1\r\n ON 4 1\r\n WV 4 1\r\n WY 4 1\r\n IN 3 1\r\n MB 3 1\r\n NM 3 1\r\n NV 3 1\r\n AK 2 0\r\n MA 2 0\r\n ND 2 0\r\n AB 1 0\r\n CT 1 0\r\n DE 1 0\r\n HI 1 0\r\n ID 1 0\r\n MD 1 0\r\n NH 1 0\r\n NS 1 0\r\n NT 1 0\r\n QC 1 0\r\n SC 1 0\r\n UT 1 0\r\n\r\n Total = 53\r\n<\/pre>\n <\/p>\n
Looking to the next rim contest event, I know of several things that we need to address before we get there, and the logging system is priority one. \u00a0\u00a0I know we will have this all figured out by the time we all take part in Winter Field Day (Jan 28-29, 2017)<\/a> \u2013 Dave AC7FF has already said he will take the lead on that event.<\/p>\nWahoo!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
See you on the air. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0_ _ . . . \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0. . . _ _<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever since the Queen Creek ARC trip to the Mogollon rim for Field Day this year, I knew I wanted to go back and operate remotely again as a club effort to capture and build on the enthusiasm of that event. We were lucky enough that the Arizona QSO party was in October this year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,4],"tags":[34,35,33,32,31,20],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contesting","category-portable","category-rim","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-qso-party","tag-mh","tag-qso-party","tag-rim","tag-rv"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Dennis](\"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_7460-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Dave,](\"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_7457-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"picture](\"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_7451-1024x768.jpg\")
![\"hands](\"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_7469-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"picture](\"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_7458-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_7337-1024x1024.jpg\")
![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.n1rwy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_7464-1024x768.jpg\")