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*      ATGP 2019 Report for ROAN MOUNTAIN - Glen N4AZR & Bill KB4KFT     75
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Ops: Glenn N4AZR and Bill KB4KFT

After a nice overnight stay in Marion NC, I arrived on-site at about 
1015am. I had my D700 up by about 1030am and my D72 / Linux laptop up soon 
after. Established links to Comers and Clingmans quickly. I noticed that 
I wasn’t digipeating right away.. My D700 keeps losing the serial port 
settings after power off. Easy enough to reprogram in the field though. 
But maybe it’s time for an upgrade to a new D710?


Bill KB4KFT arrived a short time later. I was glad to see him as he saved 
me from battery issues last year.. This year I tested with a new LiFePO4 
10AH battery. I was initially trying to be conservative with the new 
smaller battery, but it did fine. I had my marine battery just in case...
verified fully charged this time :)


For some reason I cannot reach Clingmans via 440. I can hear them fine 
although a weak S1, but even with high power I barely got through at times. 
I may explore some other areas to operate on Roan for 2020. The park is 
large with a lot of areas that may offer better links than where I have 
been operating. To work around this I sent messages to Clingmans using my 
D72 on 2m via HOP7-2 which worked fine.


At any rate the event was pretty much the same previous years. The southern 
stations established link pretty fast. We eventually saw all the way to 
Katahdin and Mt Saint-Joseph. 9600bps works great too.

We had some big storms come up around 1230pm and again around 245pm that 
made us go QRT for good. Otherwise mostly cloudy skies and temps in the 
60s to 70s. We were fortunate with 6k+ feet of altitude on our side with 
the heat wave affecting other areas.

Sorry we had to shut down early, but that lightning was too close for 
comfort! We dropped the antenna and had to wait about 30 min for a break 
to pack it all up. Thanks to Bill KB4KFT for staying late and helping me 
pack up in the rain.

See you all next year!
Glenn Crissman
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