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ATGP 2013 - Mount Greylock - 22 July 2013

AB1PH, Don Rolf:

I will upload photos documenting our location and setup to the yahoo groups files section.

Station was manned by Jeff Marden KB1TJI and Don Rolph AB1PH from Walpole Emergency Communications Association operating under call sign WA1PLE.

Our thanks to Roger Turner W1ZSAand Jeff Marden for their work to establish the D710A go kit. Our intent was to test the D710A go-kit as a tool to support our emcomm efforts.

Equipment was:

  • D710A running about 50 watts
  • Diamond X-200 antenna on about 18 foot painter pole
  • AVMAP GS6 APRS gps unit with map
  • primary power supply: two 7 AHr batteries
  • back up power supply: 35 AHr battery

This was supported by:

  • V71 supplemental transceiver with X-200 antenna
  • D72A with roof top magmount to support ANSVRV communications
  • D72A with rubber duck used to monitor digipeated packets

We arrived at Greylock a few minutes past 10 AM. We reconnoitered positions on the notch road, and up the summit road, and settled on the intersection of summit road, Rockwell road and Notch road. There is an excellent pull off and parking area which is perfect for the set up location and with a painter pole has a reasonable path to Equinox.

We were established about 10:30 and began confirm voice communications on 445.925 with Equinox. We were able to confirm packet digipeating and proceeded to watch the neighboring stations stabilize.

We eventually had voice communication with both Sam’s Point with full scale and Equinox with about half scale.

Packet communications confirms direct connections with:

  • Camelback
  • Sam’s Point
  • Equinox

One packet was apparent heard direct form mdmtn-7.

By about 11:30 AM full packet communication was in process, although there was some occasional instability with Equinox when they moved locations.

Our primary power source failed at about 12:30 PM, detected when Equinox reported no longer seeing our packets. The secondary 35 AHr was swapped in and we were on air again at 12:40 PM.

At about 2:40 PM Equinox indicated that Mt Washington was securing and that Equinox was securing. When we were unable to contact Sam’s Point at about 3 PM, we began securing. We were fully packed up and on the road at 3:35 PM.

We did not have a computer capturing packets, so do not have a packet log to add to the report.

My thanks to the AT Golden Packet team for organizing the event: it was a great deal of fun and confirmed the capabilities of our APRS go kit.

73, AB1PH Don Rolph —————————–

Companion Report from Mt Dennis:

Due to various reasons, the official trip to Dennis Hill in Northwest Connecticut was canceled this year. After a brief conversation with Pete KB1PCK, I ended up making a spontaneous trip to Dennis Hill anyway.

The Connecticut group is woefully lacking in terms of Kenwood equipment. All that I had for this outing was my TH-D7 and a Diamond dual band mobile antenna. Additionally, I had brought a Belkin 12-volt UPS and an Arduino programmed as a digipeater specifically for this event in case it was needed. The digi uses the TNC inside the TH-D7 over KISS. The digipeater was never activated.

I arrived at Dennis Hill shortly after 11:00. The HT was set to monitor 144.340 and 445.925 in Dual mode. There was no problem receiving packets or voice from Greylock. I heard no voice communication from any other site.

I had no computer with me, so there was no way to see the path of the packets that I did receive. In all, I decoded at least a few packets originated from all stations from Camelback-9 through Katahdin-15. I presume the majority were digipeated by Greylock-11. It was interesting that on some occasions I did hear multiple bursts before the packet displayed. This indicated to me that that I was receiving a few digipeated packets from various sites.

Severe weather was closing in around 2:00 PM. At that time I decided to beacon a few packets with the CTLINK-1 ID. All beaconed packets were digipeated by Greylock, and Greylock confirmed they had seen the beacon. I was pleased to see that Sam’s Point had also logged the beacon. I am curious to hear what other stations received those packets. Beacons were sent at 2:10, 2:20 and 2:25 according to the car’s clock.

At 2:30 the storm had reached Dennis Hill. NWS had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for that particular cell, and I decided to secure.

I was unable to raise Greylock on 70 centimeters at that time, probably due to weather.

Respectfully Submitted, Dana Borgman, KA1WPM