M2 6M6XHG on a 30' mast up a slope
just inside the grid DN24xx gridsquare.
Sleeping tent in the upper right of the photo.
White piece of plywood down by the road is
covering the generator.
W7GJ solo Field Day
6m Grid DXpedition
to the
DN24xx/DN34ax
line in
Lemhi County, Idaho
June 23-27,
2016
At 6935' elevation,
1.5 miles southwest of
Williams Lake, Idaho
INTRODUCTION
After the very
successful 2015 6m DXpeditions to DN34gx and
DN24so, I was hopeful that I might be able to
provide some additional contacts from both
rare grids by activating them at the same time
from the line between the two. Although
the Es propagation had not been great this
summer, I was hopeful that the high level of
activity over Field Day weekend might make it
possible to catch some openings. Using
Google Earth, I located what appeared to be an
accessible site on the DN24xx/DN34ax line, in
the far northern end of those grids, about 13
miles south-southwest of Salmon, Idaho.
LOGISTICS
The location was
only a little over 4 hours' drive from
Frenchtown, Montana - provided you didn't stop anywhere
to shop for food, get gas for the generator,
or stop along the way to admire the view or
take photos! The site was only about
an hour from Salmon, Idaho and all but the last
8 miles was on paved roads. What
was not so apparent from the Google Earth
research was the fact that the old jeep trail
up to the grid line was very steep, rocky and
overgrown with sagebrush, as well as
deliberately closed off by small downed trees,
making it necessary to operate out of the car
down on Salmon National Forest Road 413, at a
spot close enough to reach the antenna with
the feedline. I made it down to the site
Thursday night June 23 and set up the tent as
twilight was fading, resolving to further
inspect the siting possibilities Friday
morning.
Google Earth view of the
area on the line between DN24 and
DN34. The yellow asterisk is the
antenna location, the white one indicates
the station location in the rear of the car,
and the red one indicates the generator
location.
The antenna
finally was installed up on the east side
of the hill, just inside grid DN24xx, and
the remaining 40' of coaxial cable from
the base of the tower was laid out down
the hill to the car in DN34ax. The
generator was 50' northeast of the car, so
it was further into DN34. I found a
fairly flat place to tent on another
forest service road about 150 yards
northeast of the generator.
M2 6M5XHG on 30' homebrew mast up
the slope in DN24xx. Antenna is
rotated manually, and is aimed
and held in place by two white nylon lines
tied to the rear of the boom. Yagi is
aimed southeast in this photo.
Mini GPS reading of computer location at
the station
in the rear of the car
BktTimeSync
reading of computer location at the station
in the rear of the car
View of the site,
facing southwest. Antenna and mast
are up the hill between the car and
generator
SETUP & EQUIPMENT
The first matter of business on
Friday morning, June 24, was to verify the
precise location of each of the station
components. For this, the GPS
application on my iPhone was used (with the
cellular data turned off). To
corroborate the cell phone GPS results, I
also carried the laptop computer with the
Columbus V800 GPS data logger up the hill to
the antenna site. The table below
shows the results of the cell phone GPS
measurements:
LOCATION
N.
LATITUDE
W.
LONGITUDE
GRIDSQUARE
Mast
44.997471 °
114.000168 °
DN24xx
Station
44.997463 °
113.999954 °
DN34ax
Generator
44.997604°
113.999893 °
DN34ax
The above photos show the station location
in the back of the car as confirmed by two
different computer programs used with the V800
data logger at the operating position.
After confirming that the planned sites for
all the equipment would meet the goal of
operating across the DN24/34 grid line, the
work began setting up everything.
The narrow road (the only flat spot) blocked
off for antenna assembly The antenna set up took a bit longer than
anticipated, because of the uneven ground, and
the necessity to have the side guys positioned
properly so as to stay tight while the mast is
raised off the prop. Finally the guy
anchors were positioned properly and the guy
lengths adjusted so that the mast would raise
smoothly.
The 6m station was essentially be the same
as that used on the 2015 W7GJ grid
DXpeditions. An M2 6M5XHG five element
yagi was mounted on a homebrew 30' mast and
was held in place with four dacron guy ropes
attached to a guy ring 12' from the
ground. The feedline was 75' of LMR600
- the same feedline I use on my 6m EME
DXpeditions.
I used my Elecraft KX3 transceiver to drive
my repaired M2 6M1000 amplifier, powered by
the pair of Meanwell RSP-2000-48 switching
power supplies that I will be taking on my
future 6m EME DXpeditions. The weak
link in the chain was the generator, which
only provided 13A at 110 VAC before its
circuit breaker would pop. That
limited my power to about 600w output on
full duty modes such as FSK441, although I
was able to get by with about 800w peak
output on SSB.
As before, I just set up
the station in the rear of the car,
and sat outside on a portable chair
to operate. I stretched a
tarp over the car to the sagebrush
plants on the adjacent hillside to
provide some shelter from the sun
and wind. Fortunately, there
was no rain at all during the trip
nor have any untoward animal
encounters (although I kept pepper
spray nearby all the time!).
There were one or two vehicles that came by
each day. Ranchers on their way to
their grazing allotments or vacationers
coming up from Williams Lake. But
basically, it was very quiet. And
there certainly wasn't any electrical noise,
which was very nice!
Although the site overlooked the valley
containing Route 93 and the Salmon river to
the east, the bottom of the valley could not
be seen - only the Lemhi Mountain Range on
the other side of the valley.
So, although no signs of civilization could
be seen from the site, there was very good
cell phone service there. I was
looking forward to being able to use my cell
phone to watch activity maps and see where
the Es clouds were moving. However,
the USB charging cord for my iPhone turned
out to have broken, and the car charger for
the phone worked only intermittently and
very poorly off the 12 VDC plug on the
generator.
So, most of the time, I was limited to
communicating on 6m. And the only
person I could regularly talk to on 6m was
K7VK (50 miles away on a mountaintop in
DN25tr), but he had no cell phone service so
didn't know any more than I did about what
direction we might try aiming for Es.
Together, though, we did catch the attention
of some folks who had been monitoring 6m.
waiting for an opening.
I was pleased to give some folks their first
contact on 6m, and of course even more
pleased to provide a couple of new
gridsquares for a handful of serious 6m
operators who still were anxious to contact
me for those grids.
The 6M5XHG resting on the Prop ready for
raising with the Falling Derrick
Aiming circle calibrated
and ready for mast/antenna rotation
W7GJ by the operating
station
OPERATING
I was QRV by Friday night,
although it was so cold and I was so tired
from working all day Friday finding the
proper locations and setting up everything,
that I shut down early in the
evening. Friday
night was extremely windy as a
cold front came through, and
temperatures were just above
freezing, so I was quite eager to
retreat before dark to my tent and
bundle up in everything I had with
me!
Saturday morning I was up before dawn and
calling CQ on FSK441 for some meteor scatter
contacts. After several hours of
operation, I had only completed with VE7DAY,
so I switched over to SSB and started
calling CQ on the calling frequency.
There turned out to be a fairly good Es
opening Saturday evening and I made contacts
until dark, and then headed for the tent.
Sunday,
I started early again on FSK441, but had
not completed any contacts after a couple
hours calling CQ, so I went back to SSB
again. I called CQ regularly
to try to attract some attention up toward
this corner of the country, and made
frequent trips up the hill to move the
antenna tie-down lines and aim the antenna
in different directions. There were
only the occasional contacts on Sunday,
though, and most of the Field Day stations
seemed more interested in my "1B ID"
exchange than the fact that I was on the
grid line between two relatively rare
grids.
First thing Monday morning, I lowered the
antenna before the winds began picking up.
After that, I blocked off the road
for a short while so I could use the
only flat spot available to take the
antenna apart. The next step was to
pack up all the radio equipment, and
cables, and drive over to pack up my tent.
The last step was to turn off the
generator (which was running all morning
to burn up as much fuel in its tank as
possible), transfer the extra generator
gas to the car and load up the generator.
By just after noon, I was on the
road headed back to Missoula.
Operating station in the
back of the car on NF 413
Above is the horizon profile from the site. Note
that the maximum elevation to the east is 4 degrees,
but the ridge raises the elevation to 13 degrees at
an azimuth of 226 degrees.
6M
QSL INFORMATION
Please QSL direct with SASE
direct to:
Lance Collister, W7GJ
P.O.Box 73
Frenchtown, MT 59834-0073
USA
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
I made 47 contacts on 6m
from the DN24/DN34 line, and another 5 from
DN35 and 1 from DN25 while I was driving on
the way home. All the contacts
were single hop Es or shorter ground wave or
meteor scatter. For all the effort to
set up and take down at this remote site, it
was disappointing that propagation wasn't
better. However, it is always
rewarding being able to provide some rare
new grids to other 6m
operators! Good DX to all
and VY 73!
Beautiful
flowers were found in the rocks among the sagebrush around the operating site.
The
scenic drive between Williams Lake and Salmon, Idaho
provided many interesting photo opportunities
