2009 7QP experience

This weekend was my first 7QP and I was determined to do the best I could. So I built a 40' tower made of punched angle iron and #8 grade bolts. It is a sturdy tower, but under what conditions? I didn't build it to be permanent, but more of an optional temporary structure. I also decided to do a dual county setup, and with the counties I picked, required that I get on some back country roads up at about 9000'.

It took me 5 hours to drive the 200 miles on Thursday and get to the spot, which had snow on the roads and I was lucky to get there. A bit of 4wheel drive and plenty of speed helped get through the snow. And it took another 8 hours on Friday to assemble the tower and mount the antenna's and get my radio hooked up to the cables and grounding, etc. I had decided on 3 antenna (20M, 40M and 80M). Since a 40' guyed tower is unwise to climb I didn't think I would want to be adjusting any antenna's once they were in the air. So I took my 20M 2element beam that I made last year, and used my buddipole on 40M and a simple homeaide wire Inverted V for 80M. I figured having 3 bands gave me a lot of options if the band conditions weren't so good on some. After it was all setup on Friday I went to bed at 11pm local. I woke up at 7am MDT right in time for the contest. I don't think I did real wonderful, I know I won't get the most contacts award. But it was an experience I won't soon forget. Anyway the contest was fun and I was enjoying the ability to switch between bands - easily, as I don't have any permanent HF antenna's up where I live. So it was kind of fun having these to work with. The wind started up and it lasted only an hour or so, and then it started to snow. I wondered if I would be stuck there for any length of time, based on how much snow might come down. But I was lucky that it stopped in about an hour and wasn't a problem.

Later on in the day, the wind kicked up again and this time it was terrible. At about 6pm I was making a contact when all of a sudden the band went dead. Not the power (I was running on solar mounted on my camper), but it was the actual radio sounds that stopped. I couldn't figure it out until I looked outside and saw that my 20M antenna was broken by the wind. I didn't have anything to measure the wind speed, but it was strong enough to push me around when I went outside, and that just didn't seem like a good thing. So finally about 8pm when the wind still had not subsided, I decided the tower must come down on my terms than on it's own. Luckily the tower was being pushed from what I call the back. The winch was attached to the front, and I could/did remove the guy's from the front, and laid the tower down on it's back. It actually took me pressing/pushing on the tower to lay it over against the wind. But because of the wind the tower wouldn't come down straight and was pushed off to the side causing the 20M elements to break even more. Oh well, at least the tower didn't kill me or damage my trailer or camper - those things would have been a lot worse so I'll count my blessings. It appears that I only used about 1/2 of the time available for 7QP, but it was an experience I'll remember the rest of my life.

Once the tower was down, and the wind was still blowing very hard, I was concerned that I might get stuck up there. My thinking was if the wind was this bad, what terrible storm must be coming? So I spent another 4 hours tearing it all apart, shoving everything into my trailer and getting off that mountain about 12am local. Once I reached Vernal (the nearest town), it was calm and no wind and I felt kind of silly. But with the information I had up on the mountain, I wasn't sure what was coming so I think I made the best choice (better safe than sorry). I continued home and once arrived, I had been up for 22 hours.

And so that was my experience with 2009 7QP. It was short lived, and it took way too long to setup. So I'm betting I won't be doing that same thing again. If I had a tower that was a crank up/telescoping, and if I had a better setup for the antenna's, and, and, and, I might be tempted to do it again. The only real problem was the wind, and my tower of unknown durability. A tower from a commercial entity rated for some wind load might have made a difference to the effort involved. It was pretty cold up there, but I did have several heaters (propane) and stove and food and I was inside of a camper so I wasn't uncomfortable. But going outside wasn't fun. So if I had all of the comforts of a telescoping tower and a rotor, etc, it might have made it easier. But even telescoping have wind limits, so it might have had to come down. But since mine didn't have any real foundational support (other than gravity and guy ropes), I wasn't sure how much I should count on it. One other thing I haven't mentioned is that the ground was both soft soil and it was upon a rocky foundation. So I couldn't get my plastic stakes (next time I need stakes that don't bend and break) to go in very far (due to the rocks), and when I did get them in all the way, they were in soft soil. I did have every guy in it's own stake, thus if one came loose, perhaps the others would hold until I got the one back in. But luckily I didn't have to find that out.

Well anyway it was fun and I won't comment on how many contacts as I don't think I did very well. But I did make a DX contact to ZF2ZB (a dxpedition) to the Cayman Islands. And that alone was worth the trip.

At least I came home, and at least I didn't loose anything serious. It did cost me to make the tower and pay for gas to an from. And according to the 7QP website, this certainly counts for a "County Expedition". And we'll see what I do next year. Maybe I'll have a new perspective, or just maybe some new gear. But as it sits today, with achy muscles, next year I won't be leaving home.



Truck/Camper/Trailer and Tower