You know, once you get into Amateur Radio, you will always have something to do...
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We made our first Rover journey! Read about it here.

I mentioned elsewhere on this site that I am intrigued by antennas and like to build stuff. I decided to try my hand at contest rovering.

Rovering is where you outfit your vehicle with an antenna - or five or ten - and hook up radio(s) and make contacts during various contests.

The contest I am gearing up for is the 2006 ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes. I don't know why they call it a VHF contest. You actually use VHF, UHF, and Microwave.

So far I have built a PVC frame that will bungi-mount to the luggage rack on my minivan. To the frame I will attach 2 WA5VJB Cheap Yagis that I have built (One for 222Mhz and another for 432Mhz). Also attached to/mounted in the frame is a 7 ft piece of 1.25" EMT. Mounted on the EMT are 2 KU4AB 2 Meter Square Loops and a 6 Meter Square Loop. The next semi-sunny day we get I will get some pics. (I know, I keep promising pics...)

The credit for the PVC frame idea goes to N5AC. You should see his rover setup. Hopefully next time I see him I'll get some better pics of his setup. I took some with my phone, but they aren't worth posting.

Thanks to AE5P for building a wooden rack to mount equipment on, and thanks to K5QE for loaning me the equipment. You see an 2 images of the rack in my office with the equipment labeled and 3 images of the rack in the van before the Jan 06 VHF Contest.

You can see the secondary battery box in the 3rd picture above. This battery was connected to the primary battery via #4 wire. I installed 60 Amp fuses near the driver's seat (below) inline. You will also see that I routed the LMR400 coax out the back window and insulated with foam pipe insulation.