This gallery has images from my most excellent adventure during the CQWW VHF contest in July 2011. I had intended to fly from airport to airport in different grids around Western Washington.

Rain kept me on the ground for most of day 1, so I activated two grids out of my car. I found some hill tops, one in CN98 and one in CN97 and worked folks until the rain subsided mid-afternoon.

From there, I hustled back to Harvey Field, where my plane, a 2-seat American Aviation AA-1 Yankee, awaited me, all fueled up and ready to go.

The first stop was Arlington Municipal Airport in CN88, where I set up shop on the public parking ramp. Here we are, ready to rock...

The mast is a telescoping fiberglass pole that began life as a 31' "Kite Pole". I removed some top sections to keep the total height at 20', the maximum height of an antenna structure on an airport before FAA notification is required (47 CFR 17.14).

The top antenna is a 2 meter five element quagi, built to be light weight and disassemble fairly rapidly. The boom is two pieces of spruce with a short aluminum rod connector. A screw is loosened and the boom pieces are pulled apart for transit. A screw is loosened for each director, and the quad parts are pulled from the mast by removing wingnuts.

The bottom antenna is a homemade four-element 6 meter yagi of my own design. The boom is spruce, and split just like the quagi's. Each half-element is made from 0.25" 6061 T6 aluminum tubing with 0.035" walls. The interior diameter is 0.18", which is just enough material to tap for 10-24 threads. About 1.5 inches of 10-24 allthread protrudes from each side of the mast, and the eight half-elements thread right on. The driven element is split and fed as a dipole. I used a gamma match with the three-element version in the ARRL June VHF QSO party, and found the gamma match a minor annoyance. For the four-element version, I designed the antenna as a dipole at 25 ohms and use an antenna tuner to "fix" the impedance mismatch.

Here is the interior of the plane. The rig is a Yaesu FT-857d and with an LDG Z-100plus antenna tuner. On the passenger seat floor is a battery that powers the rig inside a fiberglass battery box. The clamps on the battery don't go to the radio. Rather they go to a battery charger that connects to the airplane's cigerette lighter and recharges the battery during flight.

After Arlington, I headed off to Apex Airpark in CN87 sitting at 525 feet on the Kitsap Peninsula. I spent the night at fellow pilot and ham (K6GHM) Roger Bailey's house which is conveniently located on the airport.

The next morning my planned 6am departure was delayed for an hour by fog. Oh well.

When it finally cleared out, I flew to Ocean Shores, Washington where the airport ramp happens to be split between CN76 and the relatively rare CN77. Here is the plane parked at the NE corner of the ramp, in CN77. The ramp is about 125 meters long, so I could easily move the required 100 meters to activate CN76. I do so by literally pulling the plane across the ramp. Using the engine for the move would have required dismantling the "antenna farm."

Below is a view looking East. There is a salt water bay 500 meters in front of me, and the Pacific Ocean 2 km behind me. That seems to help make up for the fact that the Olympic Mountain range sits in between Ocean Shores and most active part of the region. I made ten 6 meter and eight 2 meter QSOs.

My next stop was to Hoquiam's Bowerman Airport for fuel and to activate CN86. The field is only 9 nautical miles West of Ocean Shores, but was "socked in" by low (900') clouds. Ocean Shores was wide open--an overcast layer at 10,000'. A cool feature of the Yaesu FT-857 is that it receives the aeronautical band, so I could easily switch bands to monitor the automated weather observation station (AWOS) at Hoquiam. Shortly after "tapping out" Ocean Shores, the AWOS reported 1,100' ceiling--just legal in that airspace.

The next picture was taken at Hoquiam. No sooner did I start calling CQ than light sprinkles appeared on the windscreen. Oh'oh! I got another 20 minutes out of it. Hoquiam seems more difficult than Ocean Shores. In the end, I managed one 2-meter QSO and three 6-meter QSOs before heavy sprinkles shut down operations. Definitely the least productive grid. But I did need the fuel, so why not get a few points and multipliers as well!

The next stop was Sekiu (pronounced "CQ"), located along the northern margin of the Olympic Peninsula, and in grid CN78. With a name like "CQ", the place ought to be the ham radio equivalent of Mecca.

Weather information is sparse for Sekiu and particularly the sparsely populated West coast of the Peninsula. What I was able to piece together is that there were lots of clouds until about Forks, WA, and clear skies thereafter. I figured I had a 50:50 chance of being able to get through. After getting out of the immediate Hoquiam airspace, the rest of the route is of a class that lets me fly as close to clouds as needed (but not in them) provided I am within 1,200' of the ground.

I took a few photos of this part of the journey because it is stunningly beautiful. The green tint of my windows messes up the colors a bit.

Ahhhh...Mecca on the horizon. The land mass in the water is the southeastern portion of Vancouver Island.

Here I am, ready to call CQ from Sekiu. The aerials are pointing eastward toward the populated portions of the Puget Sound.

In the end, I activated eight grids, made 133 QSO (85 on 6 meters and 48 on 2 meters) for a total of 181 points and 42 multipliers. I'm not sure if this is the most effective approach to being a rover, but it's difficult to top it for sheer fun!

Postscript: For the future, I'll work on ways to speed up set-up and teardown. It takes a little over 10 minutes to get set-up and a little under 10 minutes to take everything down and secure it for flight. I think I can shave a few minutes off of those times. Some new antenna ideas are cooking....