Hi!

I received another e-mail from Dave AD7DB this morning, following up on the quick stop he and his brother John N7JY made in northwestern Arizona for an SO-50 pass late last night. It sounded like they enjoyed working that pass from a rare spot.

Dave and John were driving from Utah back to southern California, and found that they could stop in grid DM36 for one SO-50 pass last night. DM36 covers much of the Grand Canyon, along with portions of Arizona north of the canyon and around the small section of I-15 that connects Nevada and Utah. Dave and John stopped at milepost 12 along old US-91 (the highway between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, before I-15 was built), 3 miles north of Beaver Dam. This spot was in grid DM36aw. Dave said they had a great view of the sky to work SO-50, and also see some of the Geminid meteor shower last night.

Dave and John were using an older Kenwood TM-V7A 2m/70cm FM mobile transceiver, connected to an Elk 2m/70cm log periodic antenna, operating full-duplex. This is the setup they have been using to work SO-50 lately.

While I was in the footprint, I heard AD7DB and N7JY work several other stations after I worked AD7DB - W5CBF and N0JY in Texas, AC0RA in Iowa, WN8QGV in Michigan, and N4UFO in North Carolina. Dave and John are relatively new to working satellites, and did a good job to hand out QSOs from that spot near the middle of nowhere. :-) They will prepare QSL cards with grid DM36 and that location listed on the card, when they return home.

Thanks to Dave and John for making the effort last night. 73!

Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/