Hi!
Another day on the road... worked from 4 grids, drove almost 400 miles/640km, and still having fun. Only one more day on the road, before I'm back home and back to the "real world".
I started the day at Nephi, a small city at the south end of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area in DM49bq. I woke up early, and saw that I had an overhead AO-51 pass around 1347 UTC. I decided to try that, before hitting the road. I drove a couple of miles/km from my motel, and proceeded to work 10 stations. A nice start to a busy day.
Before the next AO-51 pass came by around 1529 UTC, I drove south to the town of Redmond in central Utah. I was in grids DM48bx and DM49ba at this location, where I worked 4 passes from here - one on AO-51, then two SO-50 passes, and finally a shallow AO-27 pass. The AO-51 pass and one of the SO-50 passes (the one tha went down the Pacific coast) didn't have a lot of stations on it, where the other SO-50 pass and that shallow AO-27 pass were busier. I worked a total of 22 QSOs from here, and took time between a couple of passes to survey my next operating location...
I drove about 15 minutes south from Redmond to another small town, Sigurd. This town straddles the DM38/DM48 grid boundary, and I stopped at DM38xu/DM48au near an electrical substation on Substation Road. Looking at a map with either Maidenhead grids or latitude/longitude showed me I was around the spot where 4 grids came together (DM38, DM39, DM48, DM49), but I would not be able to get to that spot. There has been some recent activity from DM39 (I've worked AC7SU in DM39 a couple of times in the past 5 or 6 months), so I decided to skip that grid and focus on the others in that area.
From the DM38/DM39 boundary, I worked a pair of AO-27 passes.
Eight QSOs were made on the first (eastern) pass, and 4 more on the western pass. These passes were not as busy as the passes I worked yesterday from DM58/DM59 in eastern Utah, but at least I worked everyone on these passes that wanted to make a QSO with me.
After the last AO-27 pass, I went from avoiding the freeways to actively seeking out the I-70 and I-15 freeways. I used them to move toward southern Utah, and a spot on a frontage road along I-15 on the DM37px/DM38pa boundary. Just like I had on my first AO-51 pass this morning, there was an overhead pass around 0100 UTC this evening that I worked from this spot. Thirteen QSOs were made from DM37/DM38, as cars and trucks were zooming by on the I-15 freeway next to my operating location.
I had planned to travel as far south as St. George in southwest Utah and stopping there for the night. When I got back on the I-15 freeway after the last AO-51 pass, I thought about what I might be doing tomorrow, and decided not to stop at St. George. I drove about 40 miles/64km more, reaching the town of Mesquite just into Nevada.
For tomorrow (Wednesday), I am only planning to attempt a couple of passes. There is an SO-50 pass around 1448 UTC that I will try to work from somewhere in DM36 a few miles/km up the road from where I am staying, across the border from Mesquite in northwestern Arizona. I was in DM36 a few weeks back, when I worked from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. This time, I might be able to park on the DM26/DM36 boundary for this pass. With mountains to the north and east of that area, I may only have a few minutes near the middle of the pass (midpoint of this pass for me is approximately 1454 UTC) to work stations.
After lunch, I will be on the 2029 UTC AO-27 pass from somewhere in grid DM26. Possibly the DM25/DM26 boundary on the south end of Las Vegas, the spot where I worked from last year on that road trip. Once this pass is done, I will hit the highway and get home.
As of tonight, I have driven almost 1500 miles/2500km, and have a few hundred miles/km more to go tomorrow. I worked from 4 grids (DM37, DM38, DM48, DM49) today, to go with the 4 other Utah grids I've worked from already (DM47, DM57, DM58, DM59) and the two Arizona grids around Williams AZ last week (DM35 and DM45). I've worked lots of QSOs, and I know that some of the calls are in my log a few times for several of these grids. This trip alone won't make those 8 Utah grids significantly less "rare", but at least there will soon be QSL cards in the hands of some satellite operators for them.
Good night, and 73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK - Mesquite, Nevada http://www.wd9ewk.net/