``Kilo Eight Grid Pirates''

de KM5FA

I had the privelege of operating the 1998 ARRL June VHF QSO Party with the Grid Pirates, K8GP. The operation took place near the summit of Spruce Knob, WV, FM08fq. Spruce Knob is a National Recreation Area, and is the highest point in the state of West Virginia.

I arrived an hour or two before the contest in driving rain, which really made driving the last nine miles of dirt road to the summit quite exciting. It was pretty much rain, fog, mist, and cold damp for almost the entire weekend. There was a break in the clouds for about forty-five minutes or so, starting around 1845 UTC on Saturday. As all stations were manned and the contest had just gotten underway, I took advantage of the moment and went on walkabout around the summit area to take some photos. It was the last time we saw the sun that weekend.

The station was two composed of converted buses for the operating positions, and an additional two trucks and a trailer for antenna bases. One of the buses was a converted school bus, the other a converted RV. In the yellow (ex-school) bus, the back eight feet or so housed four bunks, separated by a wall and open doorway from the operating area at the front of the bus. Along the driver's side of the bus was a long operating table, with four operating positions. Each position had a separate PC running the logging software and a rotor controller. From the front of the bus to the back:

• 6M run station: Yaesu FT-1000, SSB Electronics transverter, Henry 2006 being driven by Mirage brick. No DVP.

• 6M mult station: Kenwood TS-850, Downeast Microwave transverter, W4XP design 50MHz 8877 amplifier in a Dentron DTR2000 case.

• 6M FM: Icom 706.

• 2M run station: Yaesu FT-990, DEM transverter, Henry 2002 being driven by Mirage brick.

• 2M mult station: Yaesu FT-107MR Yaesu FTV-107R matching transverter, and WD8ISK 3CX800 design amp inside an old SB-220 case with external relays.

• 2M FM: Icom 706.

• The run stations' amps and their bricks were rack mounted in a small rack that sat on the other side of the bus near the door.

The red (ex-RV) bus was the place for the higher bands. The driver's side had a four person table booth, a cabinet setup, and then a five-foot long or so couch. On the other side, from front to back:

• A small equipment rack with the 1.25M and 70cm Downeast Microwave amplifiers near the door. The 1.25M and 70cm amplifiers were both LunarLinks.

• 903/1296 station: A Yaesu FT-736R with homebrew transverter switch box.
• Microwave station: A Yaesu FT-736R with a really fancy homebrew transverter switch box. I mean really fancy - it had a bank of lamps for transverter power/recv/tx for each of the bands from 6M to 24GHz, several knobs and other lights - looked more impressive than some of the amps/radios! The 903/1296 and microwave stations shared one PC and rotor.
• Another half rack sitting on a cabinet: Housed the 903 and 1296MHz transverters, the 500W 3CX600U7 amplifier for 903 Mhz, the 1.2GHz 750 watt water-cooled amplifier, and the 2.3 (15watt) GHz transverter. I think the 3.4 (10watt), 5.7 (15 watt), 10 (15 watts), and 24 (10 watts) GHz transverters were mast-mounted at their dishes.

• 222MHz station: Kenwood TS-850 connected to DEM transverter in the rack, with PC.

• 223.5FM: Some sort of Kenwood mobile radio.

• 432MHz station: Kenwood TS-850 connected to DEM transverter in the rack, with PC.

• 446FM: Same model radio as 223.5FM.

And, for antennas:

• 6M: run station was a 7-element C3I C7-50 yagi, mult station a five-element yagi.
• 2M: run station stacked C3I FO12-144 yagis, mult station single long-boom 19-element yagi.
• 222MHz: Stacked C3I FO16-222 yagis.
• 70cm: Stacked C3I F022-432 yagis.
• 33cm: Four bay of 45-element loop yagis
• 23cm: Four bay of 55-element loop yagis
• 2.3GHz: Four bay of 72-element loop yagis
• 3.4 and 5.7GHz shared a four-foot dish.
• 10 and 24GHz shared a two-foot dish.
• There was an assortment of verticals for the FM radios, and some omni horizontals that never got hooked up.

The stations had lots of equipment problems all weekend. Basically, the only stations that didn't have major equipment problems this weekend were 6M and 1.2GHz and up. Apparently on Thursday, both of the Lunar Links for 222MHz and 432Mhz died, but the 432 amp was put back into service putting out 700 watts on Sunday morning. On 222, they had only 70 watts the whole contest. The 2M amp had a relay problem, apparently the entire contest until the 2M op decided that there was a problem - they kept working guys, but claimed the received audio sounded like "really fast QSB." They decided that it was a relay in the amp not switching back on receive, which they apparently fixed until about an hour later when the 6M op (sitting nearest the rack) sendt out a network message that he smelled something plastic burning - well, eventually it's determined that the repaired relay is smoked and the 2M amp wasn't fixed until about 5PM on Sunday.

I didn't operate all that much, but mostly I did 6M, and some 2M in the last hour or so that I was there, and about twenty minutes or so at the 70cm station. I got the coveted 4AM to 8:30AM time slot on 6M :-)

We had decent Eskip both afternoons, including some double-hop stuff out as far as as Los Angeles. We worked some COs, a VP5, an XE, and a ZF1. We worked just about every 6M operator in Texas, I think, except for W5NFC and N5XU. Two meter conditions were probably not that great, although there supposedly was some 2M Eskip to Florida that guys just south of us got.

Something I noticed was that all the operations above 1.2GHz were CW only; I think this may have been because the two microwave ops are both EMErs. Almost all of the 903 and 1296 QSOs were CW, too. Unlike what I had been expecting, 2M was not wall-to-wall noise. It's just that all these stations kept popping up every so often and calling in. Like, a lot of them. These people are also rabid about passing stations. Even when the 6M station had a 70+ rate going on Eskip, the 2M op would pass him locals and occasionally send network messages berating him for not working the local guy who was 90 degrees off the run station's beam heading...

I had a great time over the weekend, and really enjoyed the contest and the operators - but let's not even get in to the issue of calling what was obviously a sloppy joe mixture, "barbecue."

Anyway, fun was had.

K8GP's unofficial score is 975,540, rumored to be third highest in the unlimited multi-operator category.