2021 Road Trip - EN22 Iowa: August 28, 2021 1500UTC

The EN22 activation is complete and the log is uploaded to LoTW.  See below for photos and a copy of the log.

I will leave for EN16 in North Dakota tomorrow morning and will operate overnight from Sunday night to Monday morning:

• EN16RG North Dakota - Monday August 30, 2021 0520UTC - 2M EME operations 144.132 2nd JT65b 

The EN22 activation location was a gravel farm road far from any town or powerlines.  The location was extremely quiet.  It was also very dark.  The only visible lights were from one farm complex several KM distant from the site.  And the Moon.

Here is a flash photo of station setup on roadside.  This location was about 20 miles East of my RV in the Southeastern corner of South Dakota.  With no other light visible the Moon substituted for my flashlight.

It was easy to keep the antennas pointed at the Moon.

Toward the end of the operation many thunderstorms popped up in the distance, none closer than 15km (on radar) from my site.  There were two lines, one passed North and one passed South.  Great lightshow!  The wind came up, however I have one meter long 1.6cm diameter Circus tent stakes and 3kg hammer.  I drove two of the stakes into the ground to tie down the antenna tripod and everything was very stable.  The wind stopped before I took the antennas down.

This is one of the "tent stakes"

I have used four of these tent stakes to secure the antenna tripod in winds gusting to at least 40mph or 60kmh.

2M EME Operation Results

I completed 63 2M EME QSOs.  This activation is the best conditions I have seen on the trip so far.  Many, many signals were speaker audible.  I averaged 14 QSOs an hour for the first 3 hours and almost 12 QSOs an hour for the 5+ hour 2M EME session.

This was also the longest  operating day of the trip so far.  I started in EN12 in Nebraska at 1000UTC August 27 with N9HF for Nebraska on 222 Mhz EME.  I returned to my RV in South Dakota.

At 0130UTC on August 28th I left for EN22 in Iowa.  From 0400-0920 UTC I completed 63 2M EME QSOs from EN22 in Iowa.

After finishing in Iowa, I stopped in Nebraska on the way back to my RV and completed with K1WHS on 222 Mhz EME after a relay problem prevented a QSO in the morning in the same session with N9HF.  Total time from leaving RV in the morning until returning to my RV the second time after the QSO with K1WHS was 28 hours.

Below is the log from 2M EME operations.

I will post additional information and photos on the blogspot page.

EN22 Iowa 2M EME Log