GOVERNOR DICK HILL 2011 REPORT 26 July 2011 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob, WB4APR I guess GD-Hill gets top honors as the weakest link. At the time, everything seemed just fine. Everything got up the hill OK with the huge shoulders of Rorie Shaffer, KC2UML and AJ Bruninga, WA4APR. Packets from the south were immediately seen, and the lack of packets from the north did'nt yet bother us too much at first. But here is the rest of the story... Unbeknownst to us, Murphy, N0LID followed us up the hill, and then even climbed the tower with us. Here are all his contributions. 1) I missread EST/EDT on GPS and was an hour late in predicting arrival. 2) Car full of everything on the list, but I forgot the backpack to carry it up the mountain (.6 mile) and the final vertical ladder climb (70'). Rorie showed up to save the day with a spare pack. 3) Immediately on hooking up, noticed steady carrier on 144.34 that took 100% squelch to quiet and allow my transmissions. 4) 1st heard was SPRINGER-1 from Georgia! Checked path (1st hop) and noted it was via MDMTNS. IMpossible. Incorrectly assumed there was a rogue TNC with the wrong call. Later realized that we are not using UITRACE so will not see anything but LAST DIGI. (my first time using the PATH display in the D710 on a network without UITRACE (where I am used to seeing 1st and last digi to show)) 5) Operated for 2 hours hearing everything to south, and nothing north. Blamed it (falsely) on CAMELBACK. 6) Both adjacent nodes MDMTNS and CAMLBK were unmanned so we had NO ONE to talk to to confirm they could hear me, nor what they were hearing. SO no feedback if I was working or not. 5) Celled 2nd hop north (manned) close to 2 PM and he said Cammelback was OK. SO I went looking for why we were not hearing it. 6) Swapped APRS to band B instead of Band A, and BINGO, packets from North via CAMLBACK started arriving. Turns out my D710 band A was DEAF (later measured as 13 dB down!). 7) Sent my son to check out 5PTS possible future site only 10 mi away. But now, our 445.925 coordination frequency was on the bad side of the radio, and not hering him for nearly an hour, I assumed he was just enjoying the scenery and taking his time (as I had suggested). Eventually, I made a concerted effort to call him uwing a UHF HT held outside of our faraday cage and got him. He had been calling me all along! An hour was lost. See #8. 8) AJ said it was not 10mi away, but actually 25 miles to this 5PTS site. He also told us he was seeing CAMELBACK but not even us! DUH... at 1450 then is when I realized GDHILL-8 WAS NOT DIGIPEATING! 9) FIxed it (UIFLOOD HOP was off). But then got message from COMERS that they were securing at 1500 only 10 minutes later. I replied with message saying please stay 30 more minutes. 10) THen I missinterpreted a response from Hawksbill which said "Now or never" which I think I wrongly interpreted that they needed to get down off the mountain now-or-never (maybe a big storm coming)... SO I sent out OK, THANKS meaning they could secure. 11) Then I sent out a bulletin that everyone could secure since without COMERS, we would lose everything to south. Later realized Hawksbill may have meant the opposite. That they would stay "now-or- never" to make sure it worked. But too late, my messages were out. 12) As noted above, comms was re-established with the 5PTS test site with an HT outside the cage on the ledge to hear 5PTS on UHF, and then transmitting with the 50W side A so 5PTS could hear us. It was a kludge and hard to hear with all the mom's and kids clambering all over the tower too. This evolution wasted a lot of time. 13) But at 1530, still seeing all to south were still online, we realized I misinterpreted the Hawksbill message. I Sent out BLN asking distant stations to pse send a BLTN so we could try for the golden packet. But it was probably too late. 13) We Saw CLINGMANS planning to sercure at 1545 due to coming storm so we sent out "ALL. Secure at 1545" and started packing up. Looking forward to diging into the logs to figure it all out. But it was great to see ACTIVITY on all 15 mountain tops! Can't wait till NEXT YEAR! Great going guys! I will write a QST article. Send me your best shot of your station (preferably with you in it). During all this Rorie had some time to set up the FT-817 and a screw driver (manual) whip grounded to the Farraday cage surrounding us. He could hear activity on teh SOTA frequency but was unable to be heard. Bob, WB4APR