Microwave Activity Day

[Ray Cannon - W7GLF]

I got up to Marysville and setup around 9:40 AM.  I head and worked Frank AG6QV and Dino VE7NX shortly after arriving.  I heard VA7SC and tried calling him but he faded out and I was not able to copy his grid square.  Only other person I heard and worked was K7MDL.  I listened for VA7RKM and W7PUA but no joy there.

I am thinking I should go back to spot in Eatonville to try to work W7PUA and crew up on Cypress Ridge in Canada.  It is 12 miles versus 89 miles from Rainier.  There is also Ashford, Packwood and Randle (I could visit W7PWP)..

[Ray Cannon - W7GLF]

There is also a place near where I live that would be interesting to try.  It is about 63 miles away from Rainier.

[w7pu...@gmail.com]

We (W7CQ and myself) got to Marys Peak about  9:45 but spent quite a bit of time getting the dish tripod secured from the wind. (Note, add to standard equipment: 2 or 3 sandbags).  My notes and cheat sheets got blown down between the car seats and we spent 10 or 15 min finding them!  

We tried to work K7CVU off of Rainier but got no signal.  We switched to St Helens and worked right away.  Weak but CW copy, around -130 or -135 dBm, with QSB.  We tried Adams and Rainier a second time with no success.

We had direct, airplane scatter sked with VA7SC with no success.  We discovered there is no place in the parking lot where one could go in the direction of Vancouver, BC, without fir trees being in the way.  This would really hurt the signals.

We tried with W7GLF and did see a brief blob on the waterfall at about 800 Hz.  It was considerably stronger than the background noise, so most likely was real.  It did not repeat.  We tried key-down both ways with Ray but no signals.  My waterfall would have seen signals down around -160 dBm.

We did some CQ's off Rainier with no returns. 

It was fun to get out and relearn the gear.  We will be sharper about using stuff next time!  Thanks to everybody for going out!

73 Bob  W7PUA (& Jimmy W7CQ)

PS - A reminder that the Mountain Bounce Calculator can give an idea about bounce possibilities.  See

https://www.janbob.com/electron/Calc_MtnBouncePredict5.html