Road Trip Update - August 22, 2021 1300UTC
On the Road Experience
At this point I have covered about 1/2 of the total distance I plan for this trip. So far I have visited 18 states in the Eastern U.S. By the end of the trip the total number of states may be close to 30.
I have driven 3,500 miles or about 6,000 km. I plan to drive an additional 6000 km by the time I return to Florida.
Most of the travel so far is on the US Interstate Highway system. In most cases the roads are in good condition and are not very crowded. I avoid large cities whenever possible to avoid traffic. I drive at a speed of 100km/h.
I have taken several long road trips over the years. When I was young my family would take 1 month camping trips across the U.S. When I was 17 I took a one-month long trip on my own from Michigan to Montana to backpack in Glacier National Park and then went north into wilderness areas in Canada.
During the National Parks on the Air event in 2016 I visited 22 National Parks and about 50 other National Monuments, Sea Shores, etc. in most states West of the Mississippi River. During that trip I made over 6,000 QSOs. The total number of QSOs during NPOTA was about 1.2 Million so I particpated in about 1 out of every 200 QSOs.
Most contacts were on CW. Locations included the summits of 13,000 foot mountains, lava fields on the California/Oregon border, the bottom of Death Valley to the deserted wild shoreline of the Northern California Pacific Ocean coast.
Every day while traveling to new activation locations I see at least one memorable view. The photo below was taken yesterday while traveling from Illinois to Des Moines, Iowa. I will leave Des Moines on Wednesday to go the next activation locations in EN12, 13, and 16.
This photo is taken in the middle of Iowa. There are corn fields in all directions all the way to the horizon. The corn fields are also planted with wind generators for as far as you can see.
Sometimes what you don't see is memorable. The photo below was taken on Interstate 95 in Northern Maine. I drove for 30 minutes on this highway and did not see another vehicle. At this time I am about 50km from the end of the road near the Canadian border at the upper end of Maine.
There are also large vehicles on the road. The photo below shows my truck and RV in the middle surrounded by large trucks in a highway rest stop. Soon I may be sharing the highways with these large trucks and the trucks will not have a driver. Autonomous trucks: https://spectrum.ieee.org/this-year-autonomous-trucks-will-take-to-the-road-with-no-one-on-board
The picture below is interesting. A large RV bus is towing a full size truck with a dune buggy on top AND an ATV on the back of the truck. At this stop on the road more people were looking at this collection than were looking at the 10 antennas in the rack on top of my truck.
The photo below is from the mountains in Southern New Hampshire. This is a resort on a small mountain lake. You could find pictures like this in many places in Europe.
On my trips I try to be self-contained. So far in the first six weeks of this trip I have only been to a restaurant twice, once with Paul W2EME (W4EME). I stop at a grocery store about once every two weeks. I'm not concerned about Covid, I find it relaxing to not have to find a restaurant, drive, park, wait, etc.
This is a typcial campsite where I stop. In previous years I mostly camped in wilderness areas without electricity, water or other services. There are thousands of RV campgrounds in the U.S. So far I have been able to easily find locations to stop that are convenient for my operations.
When I am stopping for only one night, I leave the truck hooked up to the RV. If I do this, I can leave in under 10 minutes. When I arrive at a location for several days, I can unhook the trailer and set it up in under 15 minutes.
For navigation I use my iPhone and one of the mapping applications. On most days when I drive I try to drive for 6 hours or less. Driving the truck and pulling the trailer is more tiring than driving a car by itself.
I look for activation locations using Google Earth Pro with Landsat satellite photos with as good as one meter resolution. In some cases I arrive in a central location a few days before planned activations. I will then take a day to visit 2-4 grids to check possible activation locations. If I have concerns about possible RF noise I use my 3 element handheld 2M yagi and ICOM705 to scan the location to determine local noise. This has worked well in most cases.
I will leave on Wednesday July 25th this week to go to the Upper Penninsula of Michigan stopping to do several activations on the way. I lived in Michigan from when I was 7 until 20 and over those years had an opportunity to visit and camp in most parts of the state. I will visit many of these locations again.
I do activations from the passenger side seat in my truck. I normally leave the engine idling while operating for air conditioning. If it is very hot, I set up the home window air conditioner instead. A typical "activation day" takes about 12 hours. Typically 1 hour drive to the activating location. I try to arrive 2 - 3 hours before the activation time so if I have a problem there is time to fix the issue. If I am not confident from satellite photos of the quality of the site, I may arrive earlier.
Setup time for the station takes less than 1 hour now. I typically operate on 2M EME for 5 - 6 hours. I then operate on 222 EME for about 2 hours. I am working with a number of US operators helping them work some of the last states they need for WAS. Station packing takes about 30 minutes then I have a one hour drive back to my camp. By this time the activation "day" has been 12 hours long.
Given the moon window times to EU, about half of the activations start in the early evening local time in the US and run all night. This makes for long days (nights). I was planning to also do 70cm EME on this trip, however this would make the days up to 15 or 16 hours long and that is too long... For safety reasons I don't want to drive an hour or longer after 15 hours.
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