Thursday, November 1, 2018

Top Sail Preserve State Park will be the N4KGL RaDAR Challenge Venue

The next RaDAR Challenge is Saturday, Nov 3rd, 2018. Dennis WA6QKN, Suzy and I will form a RaDAR team using callsign N4KGL. We have chosen Top Sail Preserve State Park for our venue. Top Sail is on the Gulf Coast near Destin, Florida. Top Sail has paved trails through the park. Those will be ideal for on-foot or on-paw RaDAR. Per RaDAR rules, we will make five contacts and then move one kilometer to the next location.



We have chosen to start with a SO-50 Satellite pass at 1545 UTC from the parking area. The park is in grid EM60.  We hope for at least one sat contact for the RaDAR bonus. If we get five on the sat we would be ready to move. Most of our operations will be on 40 and 20 meters HF. Note Top Sail is K-3664 for POTA, Parks On The Air.



We will proceed on the trails toward Campbell Lake, stopping every one kilometer to make our five contacts. We will be using a dog stroller to carry the Icom 7100 100 watt rig and battery, It takes little effort to push the stroller even with heavy gear. The stroller can support a vertical. A dipole also can be used by attaching a PVC conduit mast to the stroller. The dipole ends will be supported by 10-foot poles.

We have four hours to make contacts The radar exchange includes RS(T), name and location. The location is preferably a grid square of six digits or more. We will use these frequencies

7.029.5 CW
7.296 LSB

14.059 CW
14.346 USB

However, if there is no luck on those frequencies, we will hunt and pounce. The pace is so rapid it is difficult to spot ourselves. We will do the best we can. Check DX Summit for N4KGL and K-3664. Ham Alert is a good idea. Set that up ahead of time for N4KGL. RaDAR Ops can use a RaDAR group on WhatsApp. Ask me for the invite link.

In any case, the weather forecast for Saturday is looking ideal here in Northwest Florida. We hope for some RaDAR to RaDAR contacts. Those are always a challenge but very rewarding. If RaDAR interests you please check out the RaDAR group and the  Google+ Community