W1MOO on the Appalachian Trail
a MOOving Experience!

 Sunday, 22 October 2000 ... Bright eyed and bushytailed this Morning, Fran, KM1Z and I, N1BQ, met at the park and ride in Richmond Vermont and drove down to the Appalachian Trail crossing from Vermont to New Hampshire in the Hanover NH area. We parked at the Ledyard Canoe Club on the Hanover side right by the bridge where the trail crosses the Connecticut River.  I had begun put together the 40 meter dipole Saturday night so we only had to adjust the ends. We measured off 33 feet six inches on each end and started with that. The MFJ-259B SWR Analyzer read 1.1 to 1 at 7.050 MHz so we quit right there. (see pix at bottom of page)

The mast I had consisted of seven 4 foot military surplus fiberglass tubes each with one end swaged to fit into the bottom of the next tube. We set the bottom of the tube down over a 12 inch long 1 inch diameter pipe nipple screwed into a flange plate on a 2x6 board on which we  had parked my Blazer. We used two cord guys and the two antenna wires as the other two guys. 

We hooked up Fran's Sierra (2 watts) to a gell cell, set up the outboard audio splitter with some small amps to drive two sets of headphones and then  hooked the antenna up. Right off the bat we started hearing a lot stations quite loudly. I logged while Fran worked his magic on the key. With one 449 exception we were getting 5s through 9s on signals and except for some periods of fading almost all the signals were coming in loud and clear.

We shifted over to me operating for a while and I must thank and congratulate N2ZHY and WB3AAL for suffering through my endless requests for repeats. It's back to the Novice/Tech band sections for a lot more practice for me!

Briefly we popped in the 15 meter Sierra module and worked one station, then went back to 40 meters

The sun was bright but there was a chill wind blowing up the river. We began operating at just after 1400z and at  1740z after 30 minutes with no contacts we decided that we needed some warmth and lunch and retired to Molly's Balloon in Hanover for a sumptuous lunch and spirits and a quick trip to the Dartmouth Bookstore.

During the operation for comic relief we first discovered the true meaning of "dummy load" as Fran set up his Tuna Tin 2 with the Sierra as the receiver and then spent 10 minutes CQing into four 200 ohm resistors and wondering why he was being ignored.  Later, after we had been exposed to the wind some I got my kicks  watching Fran frantically hitting the ESCape key on the Toshiba which was running TR as a keyer (he fried his Curtis keyer last night) each time his frozen fingers hit the wrong key and sent the wrong memory string. We also concluded that, if you consider what W1MOO sounds like in CW, that we sent a years worth of dah-s in one short part of a day! In the interests of equality our next mini-expedition will be as N5HHH !!!

We made 21 contacts in NH, MA, CT, NY (upper), NY (LI), NJ, PA, VA, NC, and WI (15m). We worked Ron, WB3AAL three different times giving us a total of 19 stations. Our last contact with Ron was AT to AT which was an unexpected bonus. Thanks Ron!

 Our position was  43 degrees 42.24 minutes North and 72 degrees 17.92 minutes West (checked by GPS and posted in real time to the APRServer for station ID N1BQ-8). It was about  20 meters from the Appalachian Trail and about 30-35 meters from the VT-NH border so anyone counting the QSO for A-Trail instead of the QRP Contest may claim both NH and VT.

In the chart below 40 meters contacts were at 7040 +/- and the 15 meter contact was a 21.060 MHz. Stations who specifically IDed themselves as QRP are noted.

73 de brian, n1bq