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*                  ATGP 2019 Report for MT Washington-13                 75
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Things went reasonably well again this year which I attribute in large part 
to the fact that I have a backpack with all the gear in it that I put on 
the shelf after the event and take down again when another year rolls 
around. Having a TM-D710 A where I do not change the settings and which is 
dedicated to this task makes things so much easier as I am not worrying 
about if I have the settings correct etc.

A unique situation with Mt. Washington is that we are no longer having 
someone on Sugarloaf mountain in Maine, where I used to operate. This means 
that Tim on Katadin needs to communicate directly with Mt. Washington as 
the intermediate station on Sugarloaf is no longer available. This has 
never been an issue in the past, but this year while we had solid digital 
(APRS) communication with Tim on Katadin, we were unable to maintain voice 
communication for most of the day.

Another issue we experienced this year as we had to shift locations in the 
parking lot during the event to maintain communications with Equinox. There 
were far more people on the mountain this year than in past years and when 
a vehicle pulls in right beside you it can impact operations. After movine, 
we had reliable voice and data communications with Equinox as well as 
digital with Katadin. Both 1200 and 9600 baud worked flaulessly.

Just curious, did you have a different configuration on Equinox this year?

The only cellphone provider on Mt. Washington is AT&T and neither Jeff, 
K1OK or I had an AT&T cellphone so no cellphone communications this year. 
We did have good communicationd with Russ, KA1FKC, back in Maine who 
relayed messages to and from Lynn for us. Thank you Russ!

Thinking about future plans, I for one would be intwerested in setting up 
a semi-perminate link between Maine and GA using stations near the AT but 
not necessarly on the mountains we are currently using. For example we 
could most likely locate a note on a Ridge in northern Franklin county, 
Maine which could relay traffic from Quebec and the maritimes down into 
NH. It would also be easily accessed from much (perhaps most) of the 
Applician Trail here in Maine.

Thoughts?

John Tarbox