AB7E FOBB ’05:
Rockbound in Southern Arizona
Special to The ARS Sojourner
For the 2005 ARS Flight of the Bumblebees contest, I dragged a 24 pound backpack a half mile along a rocky hillside behind our house in southern Arizona – roughly 2 miles north of the border with Mexico – to a small canyon that faced eastward.
I ran a line across the canyon to support a dual band 20-meter / 15-meter dipole and set up my station on a nearby rock. The transceiver was an Elecraft K1 with a 7 amp-hour gel cell, key, and headphones.
Just for kicks, I allowed myself one hour from the time I started the hike to get there and set up, and I managed to begin the contest only about 10 minutes late.
The antenna was only about 35 feet above the bottom of the ravine, but the land slopes away to the east at a 15 to 20 percent grade so the takeoff angle should have been pretty low. I worked several New Jersey stations, and even Connecticut and Pennsylvania, so I guess that was the case.
The conditions definitely tapered off the last hour or so of the contest, but I had a great time in spite of the muggy monsoon weather we have here now and the stiff legs I got from sitting on a rock for four hours.
My regards to everyone, and thanks for a great contest.
CAPTIONS:
Here is my operating setup, an Elecraft K1 with a 7 amp-hour gel cell. I had forgotten what a nuisance it is to manually log a contest and avoid dupes.
Here I am operating (picture taken by my wife who hiked up during the contest to make sure the bugs hadn't eaten me).
This is a view of the antenna across the ravine, looking upward to the southwest. It's hard to see the antenna, but you can just see the white nylon supporting line.
This is the opposite view of the antenna looking northeast down the ravine. The antenna is almost impossible to see in this picture (the white center insulator is just barely visible), but the slope of the terrain is apparent.
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David Gilbert, AB7E, is a QRPer and outdoorsman living in Hereford, AZ.