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*                  ATGP 2017 Report for Roan                             75
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2017 AT Golden Packet
Roan Mountain Report
 
Operators:
Glenn - N4AZR * Gino - KI4YXO * Christy - KJ4AEO * Nathan (13) Gino and 
Christy's oldest * and* Nelson (4) their youngest

I've been interested in the Golden Packet event since 2010 when I first 
read about it online. Right away I picked up on the fact that Roan Mountain 
was one of the sites. My family has been spending our Thanksgiving holiday 
at a number of rental properties just inside NC from the Carvers Gap NC/TN 
state line since the early 1980's, so this is very special place for me 
with a lot of fun memories over the years. I always enjoy coming up here.

Our crew, including me, are all from the Raleigh - Durham area of NC 
representing the South Wake Amateur Radio Club. Gino is our special events 
director. We are a "do-stuff" club, so this is a great event for us.

Although it is not a bad day trip, it wears you out with the 8+ hrs of 
driving round trip. We actually started planning this trip with the intent 
of riding our motorcycles up to Roan with Christy following in the car as 
a support vehicle. Unfortunately, the past week's temperatures changed 
our minds. It has been nearly 100 degrees every day in central NC this 
week with Friday being no exception and bad afternoon storms every day as 
well. So we changed our plans and decided to ride together in the car. 
Maybe next year we will do the bikes.

So...this year we decided to spend the night in Marion, NC as planned 
(about an hour away from Roan). While driving up on Friday afternoon, Gino 
had a quick mobile QSO on the Mt Mitchell 145.19 repeater with Bill KB4KFT. 
Bill was familar with the AT Golden Packet event and said that he had 
participated in it many years ago. He told us that he was planning to visit 
Roan Mountain on Saturday anyway just to visit, so he would stop by to 
check out our setup. We arrived safely in Marion and had a nice relaxing 
stay at the hotel with the intent of leaving early in the morning. The best 
laid plans....

This morning, like many of us had happen today, is where the fun started 
for us too. Both of us had to straighten out incorrect charges on our 
hotel bill. For some reason, I was booked for 4 rooms and Gino was double 
charged for his room. Crazy. It took us a while to get that straight and 
we finally departed for Roan a little after 10am. A late start, but in the
 end it didn't make much difference.
We arrived on-site at about 11:15am, and had our station set up a few 
minutes later with voice comms to our adjacent sites. We saw the network 
from Springer to Apple Orchard come together quickly on my D700. 
Everything seemed very stable but we were not seeing anything north of 
Apple Orchard. Our UHF links were pretty weak in both directions, but 
VHF was strong. This was different than other years I had operated at the 
Roan Mountain site. Maybe poor band conditions? Who knows?

Shortly after we set up, Bill KB4KFT stopped by as promised. We chatted 
about our setup along with various other "war stories" for an hour or so 
before he had to depart. He was very excited about the possibility of 
getting to see the ATGP happen, but alas he ran out of time.

Christy KJ4AEO took her boys off to see the other sights at the top of the 
mountain. Roan Mountain has an incredible Rhododendron garden as well as 
a newly built overlook at the Roan High Bluff that is a couple of miles 
walk from where we set up. I highly recommend visiting this area if you 
ever have a chance. They had a nice time seeing the sights while we 
played radio.

As the 2pm hour approached, I thought about going QRT after not hearing 
anything north of Apple Orchard pretty much since we set up. There is no 
cell phone service on the top of Roan, and for some reason it is tough 
to get into the 144.39 APRS network up there. So getting a station on to 
ANSRVR is challenging. I spent the remainder of the 1pm hour trying to 
get on to ANSRVR to get a status from up North. At about this time, Todd 
AL0I called me on voice from Boone and advised that we switch to 1200bps. 
After reading the other emails about this switch tonight, it makes 
perfect sense. We switched and I relayed to Clingmans and Comers Rock 
to do the same. I mentioned to Gino that this was it and it was going 
to happen...and sure enough within a couple of minutes the map was filled 
on my Xastir screen. Awesome!
We exchanged SSTV pictures with Comers Rock using our phones to encode/
decode data. This was really neat! Great idea to do this as a side project 
this year! The boys thought the SSTV was really cool!

We shut down at about 3:15pm, headed into Roan Mountain, TN to get some 
lunch, and then headed back home.

Weather was good but unpredictable as always. Temps were about 65 degrees 
the entire time. Most of the time we were in the clouds. We had heavy 
rain during the 1pm hour. Otherwise dry.

As usual, we had several hikers and visitors stop by to see what we 
were doing. They were very interested once we explained it. The visual 
display in Xastir is always interesting to people when I show it to them.

I took a lot of pictures this year of the surrounding area (Roan was 
clouded in almost the entire time), our station, my D700 screens, my 
Xastir screen, and the SSTV image we received from Comers. They are 
uploaded to the group in a dedicated album. Anybody is welcome to use 
these pictures if they wish to do so.
As always I would like to thank everybody who participates in this event 
every year - both the folks back home coordinating and the folks in the 
field. This is a lot of fun for me, it really represents what ham radio 
is all about, and I look forward to it every summer!

See you all next year!
73,
Glenn N4AZR