AT Golden Packet Report, Mount Washington Site 27 July ------------------------------------------------------------------- Participants on site were: John Briggs, KC6TVF Michele Briggs, W7LIF Paul Cecil, KA5FPT Successes: Communications with Greylock Mountain (KB1LOY) on UHF 445.925 simplex, several beacons received on APRS, 144.34, and brief voice checks on 144.34. Echolink to the WASHDC conference node. Discussion: ECHOLINK: We established Echolink to the WASHDC conference at 11:00 am and continued to hold the link through about 12:30 pm. Talked with Apple Orchard mostly. Found that the 144.39 Augusta repeater I was using for the Echolink shares the same PL tone as the Mt Equinox repeater in VT. I was bringing up both repeaters at the same time. This caused some confusion in the Equinox area but I tried to clearly state what was going on to the guys there and they were understanding. We cleared off Echolink at 12:30 pm and stayed off their repeater for the remainder of the day. We should investigate an Echolink node on a discrete frequency to use avoid the multiple repeater issue. REPEATERS: Too many repeaters in the northeast on the same PL tone. This included the Echolink repeater mentioned above and the 147.21 repeater to talk with the guys from the Merrymeeting Amateur Radio Association (our home club). Tremendous coverage to all of New England, even simplex, from the highest mountain top in New England. APRS Relay Stations: No communications with KQ1L. We tried several times to get a response from KQ1L-6 with no replies. No beacons heard from KQ1L-6. No voice communications with anyone associated with KQ1L nodes. Not sure what happened there. No communications with Dale Paquin (N1NCI). Email from him indicated a radio failure that precluded him from playing. No voice communications on the designated UHF simplex either. Some successes in communicating with the next station to the south, Greylock Mountain. We established voice communications on the UHF simplex 445.925 frequency. This proved useful to coordinate activities. APRS contacts on 144.34 were sporadic at best. We saw several successfully decoded beacons. These showed a path of 147 miles at 220 degrees. Greylock never showed any successfully decoded beacons or messages from us. They could hear the sounds but nothing passed decoding. We did try several brief voice comms on 144.34 to test the path. Those were clear and readable. We established voice communication with Bruce (W1ZE) and Donny (WD1F) on 147.21. We were interested to see if our D700 was putting out a good signal on APRS. We had them listen on 144.34 with their TNC to see if they could see our APRS beacons. Bruce has some non-decoded packets but Donny had full copy. EQUIPMENT USED: We had a Kenwood D700 mounted in the vehicle. The antenna is a Larsen NMO 2/70 dual band. The Kenwood radio also uses a DCI dual band filter in the antenna line to help remove out of band RF sources, and there were quite a few on the mountain. There is a second radio in the truck, an Icom IC-2100. The antenna is a Larsen 5/8 wave NMO150B single band antenna mounted on the vehicle. All antennas use NMO mounts in the center of the roof of the truck. We were using high power to communicate with Greylock Mountain. We could use medium power to communicate with all other stations. OPERATIONS: We were set up and running by 9:30 am. We closed up and started down the mountain at about 2:30 pm. The auto road to the top of the mountain opens at 8:00am and closes at 6:45 pm. Cost is $28.00 per vehicle and $3.00 for each extra body. The road can accommodate full size pickup trucks but it is steep, curvy, and narrow. The road is 8 miles from the bottom to the top and an elevation change of about 5300 feet. Summit elevation is 6288 feet. It is important to note that weather is variable to a major degree. Both days show temperature differences from the valley to the summit of over 20 degrees F. John Briggs, KC6TVF