ATGP 2013 - Comers Rock - 22 July 2013

Zach, KJ4QLP

The following is the report from Comer’s Rock for this year’s Golden Packet Event. This year I ran the site solo representing The Virginia Tech Amateur Radio Association (club call K4KDJ). Our setup consisted of a single D700 (pre-programmed with the serial cable before the event) connected to a diamond X-50 collinear antenna on about a 15 foot mast. Everything was powered off a 35aH SLAB. I arrived onsite about 0900. I hauled everything up to the concrete slab at the lookout (a couple hundred yards up some stone steps/trail), and had the site up and running by about 1000. I also had a 9’x9’ popup tent for shade, table, camping chair, and backup equipment (basically all the radio gear listed above times two, including an extra 35AH SLAB).

Around 1100 the adjacent sites came online and I had solid UHF voice comms with Roan Mountain and Apple Orchard for the entire event. I ran High power on VHF for the digipeater and Medium power on UHF for voice.

For pretty much the entire event I saw solid traffic between sites 2 through 5. I had full bars on 144.34 from my adjacent sites. Towards the end of the event (around 1330 I think) I got single packets from Sites 8 and 9. Maybe an hour later I got single packets from sites 6 and 7.

Never heard anything from north of site 9 or south of site 2. Next year I will focus on condensing the required amount of equipment to haul up to the top of the hill, hopefully into a single Man Portable Pack type configuration.

I also want to get a piece of logging software together that will timestamp and log any packets sent or received from the digipeater. What I’m thinking is a small laptop connected via serial to the D700. Every time the digipeater receives a packet it would output to the serial port. The computer would then time stamp the packet arrival and store it in a file.

The hope would be that every packet sent through the site would then be logged (with a timestamp), and at the end of the event the log could be sent to Bob for further analysis. If every site did this then at the end of the event there would be a complete history of what happened, where it happened, and when it happened. Any guidance on how to achieve this would be greatly appreciated.

That’s about it, pretty straight forward event this year at Comer’s Rock.

Had about 5 families stop by the site at various times and told them what was going on, an excellent opportunity for VTARA to interface with the public. If there are any questions or anyone wants more details feel free to contact me at this email address or at zleffke@vt.edu.

73s, Zach, KJ4QLP

P.S. regarding Effort!

In maybe 5 different trips back and forth, I carried 2 35AH SLABs, 1 9x9 tent, a fold up camping chair, two backpacks (full of radios, cables, handtools, lunch, water, first aid kit, etc.), a mast kit (8 fiberglass 4 foot mast sections, plus ropes and a tripod adapter), a small tripod (backup for the mast kit), 2 Diamond X-50 antennas, a 2’x4’ collapsible table, my amateur radio Acer laptop, my personal laptop (to work on my Thesis in my down time during the event), and our club sign to hang off the tent.

Carried it all up, and when the event ended, carried it all down. It wasn’t very far from the parking area to the peak, maybe 150 yards or so.

The tough part was the steepness of the trail (though it is made easier by steps carved in the rocks).

Don’t know the total weight, but the batteries were the heaviest single items. Thought about leaving the backup equipment in the truck, but wanted it on hand to reduce the amount of time off air in the event of a failure. Not too bad really, I arrived plenty early, so it was nice and cool, and took my time and carried the heavy stuff first when I was fresh. In the future though, I doubt a 35 AH battery is required, let alone two.

I want to look into condensing everything into a single pack (something like hard mounting everything on an ALICE pack frame), and leave all backup items in the truck, unless needed.

In fact one could probably operate the Comer’s Site from just the parking area with the same results (its an excellent site), but if your going to sit on a mountain all day, you might as well sit on the peak and enjoy the view.

-Zach, KJ4QLP