Grid Expedition 2009

This year’s summer vacation was to be a couple weeks in northwestern Montana, primarily for my partner Susan to attend a quilting class in Kalispell.  After looking at the most wanted grids map, I convinced her that we should drive there and I should operate 6M from some of the rarer grids along the way.  After further discussion with Ned, AA7A, who needed DM47, DM48, DM38 and DM39 (all along the way), the plan moved toward reality.

I intended to operate mobile during the entire trip, and if the band opened, fine.  If not, fine.  Kalispell is near the intersection of DN27, DN28, DN37 and DN38.  DN37 and DN38 are relatively rare, so I planned to operate both CW/SSB and high speed meteor scatter (HSMS), with WSJT, from there.  Then on the way home, I would stop in the UT grids and operate WSJT to work Ned, since those grids are too close for Es and too far for tropo.  After I published my itinerary, I got an email from Paul, K7CW, who needed DN34, which had the same distance problem as Ned had with the UT grids.  So I agreed to try and stop there to work him.

During my planning and scheduling, Jim, KS7S, foolishly agreed to act as my coordinator for HSMS contacts using Ping Jockey.  Since I didn’t expect to have Internet access in most of the places I was going, this was an incredible help.  And Jim was able to give me operating advice along the way.  Unfortunately, HSMS works best in the early morning and once I crossed into UT, we moved to Mountain Daylight Time – one hour later than AZ time.  So when I got up at 5 AM to be on the air, Jim was getting up at 4 AM.  What a guy!

As you might expect, the band did not cooperate on most of the trip north.  We drove through some particularly rare grids, with some wonderful radio locations and didn’t hear one signal.  Such is the Magic Band!  I did manage to work a few stations from DN41, DN31, DN32, DN33, DN34 and DN35.

DN34 covers some flat terrain and then, moving north, becomes fairly mountainous.  Jim suggested stopping before the mountains to try and work Paul.  So we pulled off the highway into a rest area to try our hand at setting up the equipment.  Although I had set everything up before leaving home, this would be my first QSO under portable conditions.  As I was setting up, a guy got out of a motor home parked in the rest stop and came over to see what we were doing.  He asked me “Working any DX?”.  My jaw dropped – he introduced himself as WA6???.  What are the chances?  Continuing to set up, we found one coax connector was broken.  Fortunately, I had spare coax.  It took me about 40 minutes to set everything up and 2 minutes to work Paul with FSK441.  Susan is an expert at butt shots – here is one:

Here is the equipment:

The setup consisted of an FT100D radio driving a Mirage A1015 150 watt amplifier.  I used a Samsung netbook computer running WSJT and a Tigertronics SignaLink sound card interface.  The antenna is a 3 element yagi from M², on 20 feet of mast and an under-tire mount.

After we arrived in Kalispell, I took some time to try and find the grid boundaries of DN27/DN28 and DN37/DN38.  The exact corner of all 4 grids was not accessible.  I found a couple spots for DN27/DN28 – neither very good radio locations.  I did operate from there for 1 morning.  I found a fair spot for the DN37/DN38 boundary, although the radio horizon to the northeast was pretty high.  It was in a cul-de-sac of a development-to-be; the streets were in, but no houses.  I operated from this spot for the contest.

The rules for grid boundary operations are a bit ridiculous.  They require you to be physically in both grids simultaneously.  And they would like a movie to prove it!  Well, GPS accuracy is not good enough to guarantee that.  I parked my car as the GPS read 48.00000°, but by the time I got around to taking a video, the GPS read something else.  So for each grid boundary, there is a movie showing the GPS reading, but it was never XX.00000°.  You can find 4 movies, for the grid boundaries at DN27/DN28, DN37/DN38, DM39/DM38 and DM46/DM47 on my download page. 

I operated the VHF Contest from the boundary of DN37 and DN38.  These rules are also stupid.  They forbid a station from claiming to be on a boundary – you must choose only 1 grid.  So I chose DN37, as it is slightly rarer.  However, the QSL card shows that the QSO counts for both grids.

After some hiking in Glacier National Park:

and some wildlife encounters:

we headed home. 

Once again, horrible 6M conditions accompanied us.  I managed to work stations in DN37, DN38, DM48 and DM46 from the car.  I stopped at the grid boundary for DM39/DM38, worked AA7A and a few others, then moved to DM48 and worked Ned again, along with a few others.  I actually had an Es opening while I was in DM48 and managed a few SSB QSOs.  We moved to the boundary of DM46/DM47 and I worked AA7A and a few others.  We also had a short Es opening while driving in DM46.  I had a great time, both vacationing and operating the radio.  Look for me in 2011 – another vacation is in the works, along with some more rare grids.

Here is the QSL – the inset is from DM48 and that's Susan tucked into the back of the Jeep - it gets cold in the desert!  I hope I was able to give you a new grid.