2021 Road Trip - Update EN56 Log Uploaded and Confirmed - September 2, 2021 1520UTC

I have returned from the activation of EN56.  This was the quietest RF location I have visited in a long time.  Conditions for me were very good.  I seemed to be hearing well.  Many many strong signals.

The next activation will be on Sunday morning.  I know the EU VHF contest is running but this is the only day I can activate EN67.  I plan to be QRV until about 1600UTC so there will be two hours of Moon window to EU after the contest ends.

Had an antenna cable issue that delayed starting a few minutes.  I will post photos of the location later.

Here is the log with 66 entries.  A number of stations who previously were operating with default TX frequency settings spread out today and I was able to find them quickly.  This allowed me to call some of the smaller stations when conditions were excellent making it easier to complete with them.

You never know what will happen.  At 3:00 am I was visited by a young man who claimed he was an Alien.  He was driving on the highway and probably should not have been :-).

We had a nice chat for two hours while I operated.  I learned about his world view.  Eventually I discovered that he is retired from the U.S. Air Force and we both learned that he used to maintain some aircraft that I helped develop back in the 1980s.  That brought our discussion back "Down to Earth".

Given his placement on the Earth as an alien he was convinced that it was meant for him to meet me this morning, at 3:00 AM??  Since of course I am talking to aliens off the Moon.

The photo below was taken around 5 am local time.  The Moon is in the upper left.  There is one row of trees then the cliff drops to the Lake.  There is a fence to keep people and pets from going over the edge.

After Sunrise looking in the direction of Moonrise.  The bright object is the Sun.  Some of the tree leaves were starting to change to Autumn colors.

This is a full station view about 6 hours after I started operations.  Today it took 20 minutes to pack the station after finishing operations.

In addition to my visit by an "Alien" several Michigan Department of Transportation workers stopped by.  MDOT is the organization that maintains the roads and parks like this along the highway.  They said they have seen lots of things happen in the parks but never something like this.  The road in the picture is not the highway, it is the driveway for the park.  They gave me some suggestions for the visit to EN67 Copper Mountain on Sunday morning.

Wind is forecast for the Sunday activation of EN67.  I will use the one meter long tent stakes to hold the antenna array down.  I plan to be QRV at about Moonrise and will stay on after the 2M contest ends at 1400UTC.  I am assuming that contest operators will call throughout the band section we use for EME.  I may need to move several times.  I make sure to set up in an area with Internet access to coordinate moves if needed.  If I start at 0900UTC and run until 1600UTC that should be enough time even if efficiency is impacted by content operations.

In the contest, if you get one point for every km of distance for the QSO, do EME contacts count as 400,000 points each? :-)