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Some photos of our contest operation can be seen click here
Look for Terry W8ZN and I as we go mobile as a 2-op, 2-TX 80m thru 23cm CW, SSB & FM station this weekend running as KW4VA/M during the Virginia QSO Party 2022. Our tentative stops and times can be seen at the Day # links below. We will run from Staunton (STX) and north along Skyline Drive Sat. hitting 14 counties and then No. VA (PRW) east and south on Sun. hitting another 14 counties.
My friend Oliver WB3KLI had a Kenwood TS-930 in which the mode switch had failed. Although it appears the mode switch is a rotary knob switch, it really turns a linkage that in turn pushes and pulls a slide switch. Since the slide switch and the linkage failed and is no longer available I converted it to use a standard wafer, rotary switch. I found several on eBay, but none had enough contact points. I needed a 6P6T switch. I ended up building my own switch from a combination of wafers from 2 separate switches. You can see the photo album of my rebuild project here. Or click on the picture below.
Please check out an article I posted on my time spent with Terry W8ZN as we roved in the ARRL June contest. There you will find pictures, audio and video of our operations from various grids square in western PA and VA. I have also published numerous maps and stats of the stations we contacted across the 50 MHz – 10 GHz bands. Please click K1RA @ K8GP Rover ARRL June VHF 2016 to read more.
I organized a few fellow hams to help participate this year’s Virginia QSO Party. With the help of Terry W8ZN, Craig N4OHE and the gracious host of Jim W4RX we put the KW4VA VaQP call on the air from Jim’s shack for the weekend of Mar. 21-22. We set up a small multi-multi station with 2 HF (80-10m) stations running Elecraft K3’s and an Alpha and Heathkit amps and one V/UHF 146/223/446 FM station running a Kenwood TM-742A. Our antennas ranged from some low dipoles for 40 & 80m, to a tribander for 10/15/20m and several monobanders. An 80m wire beam, a 40m 3L rotatable beam, a 5L 20m beam, stacked 5L 15m beams and a 6L 10m beam. For the V/UHF station we ran a triband vertical antenna up 50′. Full time op’s included Terry W8ZN, Jason KJ4EOO and myself Andy K1RA as well as part time ops Bill N4SV, Rich N3UW and Mike N2NAR.
Check out my photo album or a video collage with some pictures and video snippets from over the weekend below.
Our final contest breakdown for stations and multipliers contacted is as follows:
