| June 16: It's all over |
Thanks to everyone who helped this year. The 2009 Friendship Cruise seemed to go very well for communications, and everyone seemed to survive the frequent rain storms. Total registration was 39, possibly low because of rainy weather and a less than robust economy.
John Hardy, K7ALA, operated the Green River fire station on his first time ever with the Cruise, and did a great job. The only problem was frequent multi-path distortion between the fire station antenna and the Panorama Point repeater. Monty, KD7IMU, had originally planned to help John but had to cancel at the last minute. Dick, K7MZ, then agreed to help, but found himself with car trouble at the last minute and was unable to do down. So John was left to handle the site by himself, and he did so very nicely. Fortunately, trailer storage was right there at the fire station. (It has not always been so.)
Much of the 2009 traffic centered around the road to Mineral Bottom. Portions of the road are very steep, very exposed, and also get very slick when wet. This situation kept Brent, AC7H, and Lou, W7JOF, from getting down to the site until about mid-day on Saturday. The gas tanker was delayed even longer and boats accumulated at Mineral through the afternoon waiting for a chance to get fuel. Finally, the tanker was able to get down safely and the backlog was serviced.
A gentleman not connected with the Cruise found himself stranded when he did a float trip and expected his vehicle to be at Mineral Bottom. It was not there, and three days later there was still no sign of it. We helped out by calling the outfitter only to get a recording saying they were all booked up for the weekend. Brett Sutherland, N7KG, at Panorama Point, persisted and eventually got through to a live person. It turned out that the vehicle had not been delivered due to the same unsafe road conditions that plagued the Cruise. It had been left at “the turnoff to Dead Horse Point.” After another call to establish which turnoff to Dead Horse Point, the man and his vehicle were reunited.
Water was high on the Colorado and “The Slide” posed no problems to the boaters. The dock at Moab was not usable due to construction, so MGM Bottom became the end of the Cruise. The Potash company provided space near MGM for trailer storage. Jim, KJ7S; Anita, KB7GFV; and Bryan, K7GX, were heard ably handling traffic at both the MGM dock and trailer storage.
John Lloyd, K7JL, provided the repeater at Canyonlands Overlook. It worked very well, and was likely the first instance of a single-site, single-antenna operation there. He also gave boat sighting reports to the group at MGM so they could be ready to assist the new arrivals.
Reservations for the necessary campsite at Panorama Point went awry yet again. We checked before the Cruise and found that we had the site for Friday and Saturday nights but not Sunday. Fortunately, when we checked in at the ranger station to get our permit, we discovered the other party had canceled, and we had the campsite all to ourselves after all. (Looks like the rain wasn't all bad!) This saved us from having to move camp midway through the weekend and from having to put the transmitter in a difficult-to-access location. This was the first year that we did not see a single other visitor to the Point. The rain created a few new challenges on the road when it came time to leave.
Operation from the water included Bret, WX7Y; Les, KF7BJU; JJ, KE7HJE; and Jerod, KF7BOM, on Sheriff's rescue boats; Mary Ann, KA7WCH, on Randy and Kathy's sweep boat; and Larry Bullard, N0WRK, a cruise participant.
Larry writes:
Gordon: I wanted to email you and congratulate the Communications team for an outstanding net this year. I had great coverage this year. Moving my antenna to the opposite side of my boat gave me a better footprint for Panorama. I learned that last year. I am not aware of any dead areas after you set up Panorama Point. I started NET coverage at about Mile 81 where we had camped the first night. Great coverage for the rest of the trip.I was impressed with the fact that everyone was listening and participating this year. Your operators were giving technical suggestions to those with poorer communications. I picked up some pointers there. Our whole boat party enjoyed the listening to the radio traffic. It seemed everyone was enjoying relaying information, visiting and providing the NET.
Give my thanks to the Comm. team for making this a great trip again. I know everyone suffered the weather and a lot of car washing and equipment drying was in order. Your efforts were appreciated.
-Larry Bullard, N0WRK
And thanks to Larry who gave us valuable information from the water. He saved at least one unnecessary trailer move by letting the Green River folks know of a boat that would be returning to the starting point.
We missed several stalwarts this year including John, W7CWK; Ron, K7RJ; Elaine, N7BDZ; and Mike, K7DOU. We hope to see everyone again in 2010, assuming there is a 2010 Cruise.
| May 19: Dick Will Go to Green River |
We think we have everything covered again. Dick Abbott, K7MZ, has graciously volunteered to fill in the spot at Green River.
| May 19: Monty is Unavailable for Green River |
We got word last night that Monty won't be available after all to operate at the Green River fire station. John, K7ALA, is still planning to go and may get some assistance from Mary Ann, KA7WCH, who will be at Green River until Kathy and Randy's rescue boat leaves for the sweep on Saturday afternoon. But Mary Ann is also committed to helping Kathy with registration, so we could really use another Green River operator.
If all the omens are favorable, John, K7ALA, will try an experiment after finishing at Green River. Lathrop Canyon is a spot down river from MGM where it is possible to hike or get a four-wheel-drive vehicle down to the river. John will try to get there and relay numbers of boats going upstream so that MGM can be alerted as to what trailers they need to get ready. Normally, this information would be sent from MGM to Moab, but with MGM being the pullout point this year, everything shifts down a notch.
John Lloyd, K7JL, reports that he may use 145.39 as a backup frequency for the Canyonlands Overlook repeater in case of any interference problems. We expect the normal 147.38 to be used instead, but everyone might want to program 145.39 as well in case there is a need to resort to the backup.
| May 13: We have a winner for Canyonlands Overlook |
John Lloyd, K7JL, reports that possible obstacles have been cleared and he will be able to set up the repeater at Canyonlands Overlook. He will be taking his son, Brian, KD7BAY. The result is that we do expect to have the full linked repeater system available. (This had been in question with Mike Collett, K7DOU, and Kirk Boman, KD0J, unavailable this year.) The frequencies have been cleared with the Colorado frequency coordinator.
People from the Emery County Sheriff's Office will be manning two rescue boats. We may need one additional boat operator but we're waiting to find out for sure.
The folks that have done Moab in the past will be manning MGM Bottom — boat dock and trailer storage.
There is a chance we may want to send an operator to Lathrop Canyon, a spot downstream from MGM and accessible by four-wheel-drive, to catch registration numbers of boats going past. These could be relayed to MGM so that the matching trailers can be brought down.
| May 12: Miscellaneous updates |
We have Brent Thomas, AC7H, and Lou Little, W7JOF, doing Mineral Bottom. They have lots of experience there and know the drill well.
Some of the group talked to Bret Mills at the E-Comm hamfest and believe that the Sinbad folks will be covering MGM and multiple rescue boats. We're still waiting to find out if we need to supply operators for other rescue boats.
Larry Bullard, N0WRK, from Grand Junction tells us that he will again be taking the Cruise. He has been helpful in the past as an additional set of eyes and ears on the water.
Mike Collett, K7DOU, and Kirk Boman, KD0J, who have in the past set up the repeater at Canyonlands Overlook, are not available this year. We are hoping that John Lloyd, K7JL, borrowing some of the equipment from Mike, can take care of that site. John is still checking to make sure he does not have work or family commitments.
It has been suggested that we might send an operator to Lathrop Canyon, another site on the Colorado that can be accessed with four-wheel-drive. In the past, MGM has reported to Moab the registration numbers of boats that have gone past. This allowed folks at Moab to have the trailer ready when the boat arrived. Obviously this won't work when MGM is the end of the course. Someone at Lathrop Canyon with binoculars (and maybe a giant sign that says "What's your number?") may be able to catch the numbers of many boats and relay them to MGM. Kathy is going to check with people who have helped with the pullout at Moab and see if they think this would be helpful enough to be worth the effort.
| April 27: The Cruise is Probably On |
I talked to Kathy Ryan this evening and she said the Cruise is perhaps 90% likely to run this year. They are going to wait for a final water prediction that will be available in early May, but everything known is favorable at this point.
They will be pulling boats out at MGM instead of Moab this year due to the construction near the Moab dock and lack of any place to park trailers. Trailers will be parked in a wide area along the dirt road a ways past MGM. So we won't need a Moab station, but the MGM operation may need to provide an operator using an H-T for the trailer storage area.
No one has volunteered to coordinate the whole operation yet. Volunteers are needed for virtually every position. Let me know if you are available for the weekend.
-Gordon, K7HFV (k7hfv@arrl.net)
|
Evaluations from 2008 |
| June 3: Ron Talks to a Ranger |
Ron, K7RJ, writes:
I had an interesting Friendship Cruise related experience the week after the Friendship Cruise when my son Dennis (KC7KDX, by the way), and I were back in Canyonlands in the, more or less, Panorama and Hans flat area.Clint suggested we sent a thank you note to Cynthia — and the general Canyonlands ranger staff, I might add. Great idea. They were extremely cooperative, understanding, and easy to work with. Here is an update and a little insight.
When Dennis and I were in the area the following week, below the Flint Trail and nearing the turnoff to Teapot Rock, we ran into a ranger who stopped us and asked about where we were going, supplies, permits, etc. No big deal, but his name and face was familiar to me. It turns out he was with Cynthia. I introduced myself and said that I was one of the hams at Panorama. We then had a 20-minute discussion about the whole event, where we ended up camping, if we had any problems, etc. I told them about finding out that I knew the people who reserved the site and we had a good laugh. At any rate, it turns out that he was very involved in the decisions on how to accommodate us, and he had suggested that we camp off the road and that they do everything they could to allow us to set up the radios. In fact, he thanked us for setting up the gear. He had praises for the ham radio operation and wanted to do everything he could to see to it that we keep coming back. He said that we have save them a great deal of work by having such good communications and, no doubt, have added to the safety of the event. He was anxious that we come back and wanted to know what he could do to help. He was praising us as much as I was praising them for allowing us to “bend the rules.” I left with the idea that we have some good friends there and they are very happy to have us around.
I wish I could remember his name, I think it was Cox. He as about our age (the old guys, not Clint), I'd say in his 50's or early 60's, light colored hair, medium build and height. He was extremely personable and very talkative. [Most likely Gary Cox, Cynthia's husband. -K7HFV] Cynthia remembers us, of course.
Just thought you'd like to have this bit of insight.
73,
Ron
| May 28: Gordon's Ramblings |
It's over for another year! I think we provided communications about as successfully as we could have hoped for. I was very impressed with how both the hams and the Cruise officials had to deal with numerous changes in plans and were able to adapt and keep everything running reasonably smoothly.
On the ham side, Gary sprained his ankle and couldn't go to Green River, so Dick filled in. Lou couldn't go, so Chuck, who originally was going to MGM, went to Mineral instead of Green River. Bill Oberg couldn't go, so Elaine went to MGM after her stint at Green River was over. Kirk and Susan had to leave early, so Dick went to help Mike after his fire station duties were over. Got that? (I'm not making this up!)
On the Cruise logistics side, due to high water on the Colorado, the pullout point changed from Moab to Goldbar to MGM, and finally, on Sunday afternoon, back to Moab. Issues with trailers, Tex's tours, and where to park the fuel truck at MGM were all dealt with professionally and expeditiously.
I'm hesitant to make any suggestions because it seems to me that the repeater system had the fewest problems ever. At Panorama, the only trips to the receive site we had to make were to set up Clint's amazing creation on Friday and tear down on Monday. That's a first! Our only extra trips to the transmit site (about a ten-minute walk from camp) were to start, stop, fuel, or service the generator.
One glitch was a carrier that appeared on our '72 Panorama Point input frequency several times a day for about four minutes. We believe we've eliminated all internal possibilities as the source. It seemed to be getting into the receiver whose beam was pointed toward Green River. We hope it wasn't one of our operators and that doesn't seem likely since it continued on Sunday after everyone in that direction had shut down.
The other problem was a brief period when the Canyonlands Overlook repeater started apparently keying itself up on carrier drops leading to an unending series of ker-chunks. Mike fixed this quickly by changing batteries (a fix that Clint remembered had worked on a previous year). Mike is going to try some tests on a variable power supply and see if he can duplicate the problem on the bench.
Neither problem caused us serious grief, however, and I don't believe there was ever an interruption lasting more than about five minutes.
There was a brief issue with the Grand Mesa repeater coming through '12 on Friday and '38 on Saturday, but both were quickly cured by simply tightening the squelch of the link receivers. Being fully frequency agile would be nice, but forcing Mike to change his link transmitter from the clean rockbound unit he's using might not be necessary. Once we dealt with the Colorado signal, it caused us no problems (that I'm aware of). Its presence on 449.3 is a bit of a guarantee that no other, closer, systems are likely to appear on that frequency. Having a sharing partner we can live with isn't the worst possible situation.
Larry, if you hear any reports that we got into any of the systems listening to Grand Mesa, let us know. That would certainly dictate a change.
I totally agree with Elaine that we need to stress bringing up one's carrier well before one starts talking. We often heard someone try to say,
“Grammarblaf this is Flustersnork”
but all that got through was “Flustersnork” and Flustersnork sat wondering what was wrong with Grammarblaf for not answering. Multiple words were lost before the crossbander, then the local repeater, then the linked repeater all had a chance to come up.
All in all, though, it was a very successful year for communications. Everyone should be congratulated for a great job.
-Gordon, K7HFV
P.S. Anyone with further observations and/or pictures, feel free to send them along.
| May 28: Ron's Musings |
Ron, K7RJ, writes:
The following is a quick review of the unique situation this year (2008) at Panorama followed by a list of suggestions.Monday, as we were packing up to leave, the group that had reserved the Panorama camp site before that caused us to have change our transmitter site and move our camp site, drove past our site. They slowed down and we waved. They stopped and opened the window. The driver looked at me and I looked at him. Then, the conversation went something like this:
"Ron, is that you?"
"Jay!! What are you doing here?"
It turned out the other party was a friend of mine and his wife. Had we known, we could have shared the camp site and Jay would have gotten a kick out of the radio installation.
Another interesting coincidence occurred on our way out, I called Elaine on the Sinbad system. She promptly answered my call. I asked her a couple of questions and turned it back to her. She could not copy me. It turns out that she was not answering my call but was calling me. She didn't hear me and just happened to call me at exactly the instant that made it sound as if she were answering me. Have we been married too long?
The Park Service was very accommodating for us in spite of being late with our reservations. Understandably, we had some extra restrictions. We were to be extra careful about footprints and low impact camping. We also had to make sure our radio installation was neither seen nor heard from the official Panorama Point campsite. We gladly met both of the conditions. Because it is our nature, we didn't have to alter our camping style to any great extent, but we did need to find a new transmitter site. We set up the main camp on mostly rock and set up our tent in a minor wash area. We parked on rocks and were extremely careful about where we walked. When we left, we raked out as much evidence as we could that we were there. Since we had to find a new transmitter site away from and out of sight from the camp site, we had to carry in some heavy gear, including three heavy (100-pound) batteries a few hundred feet. But, we managed.
The entire weekend was quite windy with very little time with no wind. The wind was gusty and at times very strong. Fortunately, it didn't kick up any dust or sand. But, it did cause one fatality. Monday morning the strong gusts managed to get under our big tent and break one of the main supporting members and the tent collapsed. We had it guyed, but could not stake it very well in the shallow sand. It was also fairly chilly and, at times, the chilly wind felt downright cold.
The evenings were generally very nice in spite of some lingering wind and we were treated to nice star shows. We witnessed a very bright Iridium flare (magnitude -7). We had either clouds or memory loss for the various space station passes so we missed seeing them.
The repeaters worked great. There was a problem now and then with what seemed like a stuck mike button. A few times during the cruise we had a steady, unmodulated carrier lock up the repeater. It always went away after a few minutes, but was a bit concerning. Also, it turns out that our link frequency is shared with a repeater in Colorado. Tightening our squelch and the fortunate lack of traffic on the Colorado repeater made the situation tolerable, but it could have been a real problem. We should consider changing link frequencies next year.
Clint's low power beacon that reported voltage at the transmitter site was a real convenience since the site was about 10 or 15 minutes away.
Fortunately, we had no disasters. Everyone seemed to have a great time. We are lucky to have friends we can spend a few days with on a cold, windy ridge, carrying heavy loads across soft sand and emerge still good friends looking forward to doing it again.
Following are a few of my recommendations. They are in no particular order. Take them for what they are worth.
- The web carrying harness for the batteries was inspirational. It worked great. However, it was a little difficult to install on the 100 pound batteries. After hauling a battery for a few hundred feet, it was really difficult to pick up a new battery and fit the harness around it. I have a bunch of web and am going to build a few of the harnesses so we can keep them on each battery.
- Both Panorama and Canyonlands Overlook needs to make sure to have wind proof gear. The main tent should be guyed and weights put around the inside edge. After I repair my tent, I am going to add features to make it more wind proof.
- The link frequency should be changed. Better yet, it should be field changeable in case we discover another conflict while we are there. Ideally, they should be able to select any frequency!
- A simpler mast for the transmitting antenna may be all that is needed. The little mast we used at the "new" site took only a few minutes to set up and seemed to work fine.
- Was 300 pounds of lead necessary for the transmitter site? If we have to haul heavy batteries, could we do it with only the generator or the generator and a single big battery? Even if we set up at the campground, it would be nice to not have to haul so much weight. That is a technical question for Clint who knows the numbers better than I..
- I think we should try to set up a dedicated 80-meter station and monitor it as much as practical. It is fun to play on the other bands, but between us, we have enough rigs that we can dedicate one to monitoring 80 meters. At least, if we want to play on the other bands, when are done we should return the station to 80 meters and monitor.
- The transmitter voltage beacon was a brilliant idea that became invaluable, especially since it was a hike to the site. It should be always used, even if we set up at the campground. It tells the voltage and you can deduce if it is being charged, but a nifty feature would be for it to directly tell you if it is being charged. An extra beep, a Morse letter, or what ever would make it a lot easier to deduce if it is being charged.
73,
Ron, K7RJ
| May 27: Kirk's Evaluation |
The system seemed quite reliable overall this year. My only suggestion would be to move the UHF link off of the Grand Mesa repeater output. That certainly wasn't a big problem this year, but I suppose that if they were particularly active on the same weekend that we are, it could be. In that part of the world it shouldn't be too difficult to find a clear frequency.
| May 27: Elaine's Evaluation |
Elaine, N7BDZ, writes:
Whatever you did for your receive and transmit sites, we heard Panorama at the fire station with NO trouble this year. I know there had been talk of a crossband repeater to boost the signal but it certainly wasn't needed this time — I was able to bring up Panorama with 5 Watts on my HT from the fire station.Getting the additional repeater coverage in/from Colorado wasn't all that beneficial, though. Would it help to re-do the link frequencies?
And, no matter how many times we tell our operators this, we need to tell them again (and possibly several times a day) that they should wait a full second [after keying up] before talking on the linked repeater system, especially if they are getting into the linked system with their own cross-band system. We had a lot of lost ID's and missing syllables from the folks at Mineral, MGM and on the boats. The people at Moab didn't seem to have too much trouble, but they're used to talking on linked repeaters all the time.
73,
Elaine
| Send further news, additions, or corrections to K7HFV@arrl.net. |