• Historical information about roving
• Photos of the September, 2003 contest
• Photos of the January, 2004 VHF SS
• Photos of the June, 2004 high plains expedition
• Photos of the January, 2005 high plains expedition
• Photos of the January, 2006 VHF SS
• Photos of the January, 2007 VHF SS
• Photos of the September, 2007 contest
• Photos of the January, 2009 VHF SS
• Photos of 2009-2011 contests, including the club competition
• Photos of the 2012 East Texas adventure

     Ever since the advent of the Maidenhead grid square multiplier system in amateur radio, "roving" in VHF/UHF/microwave radio contests has been popular. 
     Under the Maidenhead plan (so named because it was developed at a conference in Maidenhead, England), the world is divided into geographic units one degree of latitude high and two degrees of longitude wide that are identified by four-digit codes such as FN20 (in the U.S. northeast) or DM04 (in Southern California).  The system also provides for six-, eight- or even 10-digit codes that can be used to pinpoint a station's location more precisely.  The original idea was to facilitate calculations of the distance between two stations for contests with distance-based scoring.  That scoring system is widely used in Europe, but in North America the four-digit grid squares are used as multipliers in most contests.  The total number of points for two-way contacts is multiplied by the number of different grid squares worked.
     Because many grid squares have little or no local activity (especially on the UHF and microwave bands), the Maidenhead system encouraged roving stations to travel to various grid squares during VHF/UHF radio contests.  What they do is akin to a road rally with amateur radio equipment aboard, and it has enormous appeal to people who might not otherwise operate a VHF contest. 
   Some amateurs spend months planning an itinerary that will take them on a 1200-mile trek through 20 or more grid squares during a contest.  And rovers have dramatically increased the activity level in sparsely populated areas, while providing otherwise unavailable multipliers to fixed contestants.  Starting in the 1980s, N6NB and ever-larger groups of friends have been roving.  The photos here show many of our early and more recent rover installations. 
    Although it's very popular, roving has been surprisingly controversial--for several reasons.  For one, questions have been raised about rover operating practices.  Many rovers attempt to visit as many grid squares as possible, a practice encouraged by the ARRL rules (which award an extra multiplier for each grid square visited during the contest period).  That forces rovers to keep moving, never venturing far off the major highways and rarely stopping to operate with high, directional antennas.  If they are to visit as many grid squares as possible, rovers have no choice but to leave rare grid squares quickly and go on to grid squares that are not rare.  Some fixed operators say this makes it more difficult to contact rovers in the rare and distant grid squares that they visit, defeating one purpose of roving.  There have also been perennial complaints about two other practices:  (1) "captive" rovers seeking out only one or a few stations while they're in each grid square and making little effort to be available to the general amateur community; and (2)  "grid circling" in which two or more rovers travel together and work each other as they move around a point where four grids converge.   Some object to rovers working each other in several grid squares even if they don't engage in "grid circling."  Two rovers will often travel together and work each other only once in a given grid square (as opposed to working each other multiple times as first one then the other of them circles around a grid convergence).  When rovers travel together, that has been called "pack roving."
    The rover scoring system has also been controversial.  The system has been revised four times, and some rovers are still not pleased with the result.    Originally, rover stations scored their activity in each grid square separately.  For a time QST magazine listed all of these separate scores and didn't separate out rovers from single operators. The separate scores were very low compared to single operator scores, even if all of a station's scores were added up.  Rovers demanded better treatment.  The response was a rover scoring system, introduced in 1991, that some have called "megascoring."  The contacts and multipliers from all locations were aggregated and the sums were then multiplied, producing much larger total scores.  Even though that produced an enormous increase in rover activity, the higher scores stirred controversy, too.
    A review of rover participation in VHF contests in the three years before and after "megascoring" was introduced illustrates just how much the recognition in QST and the new scoring opportunities increased activity.  In June, 1988, eight (8) rovers submitted logs.  In September, 1988, there were 11 rover logs.  In June, 1989, 21 rover logs were submitted, with 15 submitted in September, 1989.  In June, 1990, there were 20 rover logs, with 13 in September, 1990.
     Then roving exploded, aided by the new scoring system.  In June, 1991, the first with "megascoring," there were 50 rover entries--more than double the number the previous June.  In September, 1991, there were 30 rover entries, a 50% increase from a year earlier.  In June, 1992, there were 64 rover entries--another big increase.  September, 1992, attracted 46 rover logs.  In June, 1993, there were 63 rover logs, with 62 in September, 1993--another very large increase.
    Although roving was booming, some opposed the new scoring system.
    To dramatize what they saw as the unfairness of that system, four amateurs (two father and son teams) in New England went roving in the January, 1993 VHF contest in two vehicles, working each other on nine bands as they circled around the point where four grid squares came together.  Then they did the same thing at another convergence of four grid squares.  When the contest was over, each of the four had amassed one and a quarter million points:  four people in two vehicles had scored five million points.  The highest fixed station score in that contest was about 300,000 points.  Then the four added their scores with those of fixed stations in their radio club, the Hampden County Radio Assn., creating a club aggregate score more than triple that of the perennial winner, the Mt. Airy VHF Club in Philadelphia.  The Mt. Airy Pack Rats had won the club aggregate competition every year for more than 30 years, but the rover scoring system ended that tradition.  Fixed stations simply could not compete.  A further irony was that the Rochester VHF Group, the perennial number two club in the January contest, also topped the Pack Rats that year--but got upstaged by four guys in two vehicles.  RVG's long-sought triumph in the club competition was not to be--until later.  (As QST magazine pointed out, though, RVG's club aggregate score was also boosted by rover scores.) 
   The high-scoring foursome (Stan Hilinski, KA1ZE, and his son Kevin, NR1L, and Robert Cohen, K1CPJ, and his son Scott, KA1QAS) revolutionized VHF rovering--and demonstrated what was possible.  But because their monster scores overwhelmed the traditional club competition, there was an outcry for still another change in the scoring system, although many rovers defended the "megascoring" system by arguing that it made the contests a lot more fun and stimulated activity in many parts of the country.  The debate raged at club meetings and conventions, in petition-gathering efforts and on the air. 
    After several years, ARRL reached a compromise:  rovers could continue to aggregate their QSO points, but they could count each multiplier only once--with a single additional multiplier for each grid square activated.  This resulted in rover scores somewhat more comparable to those attainable by fixed stations.  However, it became clear over the years that rovers can still achieve high scores, especially when two or more rovers travel together so they all can work the rare multipliers that they are handing out to others.  By roving in tandem and sometimes circling a four-grid convergence, rovers can amass scores that only the top fixed single-operator stations can match.  This has enabled some rovers to achieve high scores even in sparsely populated areas where there may be no fixed stations.
     After the rules were changed a second time, just about everyone thought the scoring record set by KA1ZE's team would hold up indefinitely, but the mark only stood for six years.
     Operating under the revised scoring system, a team formed out of the legendary Grid Pirates multioperator contest group, signing N3IQ/R, scored 1,391,942 points in the 1999 VHF SS.  Operators ND3F and WD8ISK (later K8ISK and then W8ZN) roved in tandem with K8GP/R, operated by K6LEW and KA3QPG, who posted a score of 827,372 points.  The two teams visited 15 grid squares and worked each other on an incredible 12 bands--and then set out to work everyone else they could hear in the activity-rich northeast corridor.
     Many other teams of rovers from coast to coast have achieved good scores by roving in tandem.  At least seven of the top 10 rovers in 2004 VHF SS traveled with another rover.  In recent years rovers in Eastern Washington, Western Washington, Southern California, the upper midwest, Rochester, NY and the high plains have all scored 250K or more (often much more) by roving together.
     This led to still more controversy and another major revision of the rover rules.  In 2008, ARRL added two more categories to the rover competition.  In the unlimited category, rovers may work each other freely and may even "rove" by operating at two or more fixed stations in different grid squares during a contest weekend.  Large groups may also operate together in a bus, for instance, in the unlimited category.  (The normal limit is two licensed operators.)  However, unlimited rovers may not participate in the club competition--their scores cannot be counted toward a club's aggregate score.  In the classic rover category, rovers may only work any one other rover a maximum of 100 times and may not operate from a fixed station because the rules require that the rover vehicle transport the entire station, including antennas.  A third limited rover category was added in 2008.  This is a category for rovers who operate on no more than four bands (any four bands at first) with a maximum power that is the same as in the single operator low-power category (i.e., 200 watts on six and two meters).  In 2009, the limited category was restricted to the lowest four bands in any VHF/UHF contest.    Like classic rovers, limited rovers are allowed to work any other one rover a maximum of 100 times.  Classic and limited rovers are allowed to participate in the club competition.
     The three-category rover system remains controversial, with some contending that rovers can still achieve excessively high scores by roving together.  Some have called for still more changes in the rover rules--even a return to the original scoring system where activity in each grid square was scored separately.  It remains to be seen how that might affect overall contest activity--and whether the resulting low scores might cause roving to revert to its original status as primarily a means by which some fixed stations could boost their scores.
    Whatever the pros and cons of the scoring system, rover operating is still popular in VHF contests. 
    The photos on this page show many different rover stations built by N6NB.  Building them was a logical outgrowth of building portable contest stations in campers during the 1970s and 1980s.  The first of those, the so-called "Cabover Kilowatt," appeared on the cover of QST magazine in 1971.  The first dedicated rover, built around an Isuzu 4X4, was used with good success in the 1990s.  Its main innovation was a method of setting up relatively high directional antennas quickly.  It took not more than two minutes to go to the operating position with the antenna stack upright (top photo) from the travel position (photo at left).  The mast was secured to a rotator on the rear bumper of the truck with one bolt.  When the bolt was removed, the mast tilted forward into a cradle on the truck.  Then a coaxial cable and another bolt were removed to slide the 6-meter antenna off the mast and into a rooftop cradle.    For optional high-power operation, starting a gasoline generator took another minute or so. 
    This installation worked well for someone who wanted to go to just a few grid squares and spend considerable time operating in each one, perhaps from a superior off-the-highway location.  That allowed more people to contact a few rare grid squares, but it precluded visiting 15 or 20 grid squares during a contest.  In the June, 1998 VHF contest, the N6NB/N6MU team had the top score on the west coast, but we only visited eight grid squares.
     The second rover station, used during the early and mid-2000s, utilized a Ford E350 15-passenger Supervan with all but the front seats removed.  Its antenna system was similar to the one on the Isuzu but with a longer mast to take advantage of the greater length of the van.  That permitted excellent separation between antennas for various bands, minimizing interaction.  This rover station made its debut during the 2003 January VHF SS contest on the east coast.  The van was driven from California to the northeast and back just for the contest--a 6,500-mile trip that may rank as the longest roving expedition ever in total miles driven before, during and after the contest.  In the photo here, the van is shown at an overlook on Interstate 80 near Hackettstown in western New Jersey (FN20).  Was it worth a 6,500-mile trip?  Any dedicated amateur radio contester knows the answer to that question!  It was also a sentimental journey--N6NB/1 on Mt. Equinox, VT, set national scoring records in the June and September VHF contests as a single operator in 1979-1980.  The September record was never broken under the old multiplier system (ARRL sections were used as multipliers in VHF contests until the early 1980s).  The E350 van shown in these photos was replaced in 2008 by a new E350, which was configured similarly.  The new van appears in some of the later photos.
     The photos immediately below show the N6NB/N6MU tandem roving team that had a combined score of almost 700,000 points in the 2003 September VHF contest.  It was the first of many contest expeditions by a growing group of rovers, many of them members of the Southern California Contest Club.  One 10-band station was installed in the Ford van; another 10-band station was installed in an SUV.  One of the highlights was reaching CN90, grid #16, 10 minutes before the end of the contest.  Perhaps the low point came the night before the contest when the SUV that was earmarked to be the second rover vehicle had a transmission failure.  Starting at 9 p.m. on Friday night, John (N6MU) and I built a roof platform for his Suzuki Sidekick and moved the entire station over from the out-of-commission SUV.  We did a mini-roving expedition at 1 a.m. to test everything (it worked, making it possible to go ahead with the original contest plan).
     Further down this page there are several photos of the first three-rover operation in January, 2004.  It produced a combined score of more than three million points, with N6MI/R, N6MU/R and N6NB/R each topping a million points.  The third 10-band station was built during the fall of 2003.  The January contest was the culmination of many months of planning and building.  There are also photos of the June, 2004 "high plains expedition," during which three 10-band stations roved through 20 grid squares ranging from Midland, TX to the Nebraska border, with N6NB setting a new June record of 1.29 million points.  Further down there are photos from the January, 2005 contest, when N6NB/R (operating with W6XD), N6ZZ/R (with N2IC) and N6MU/R (with K2MM) visited 22 grid squares in New Mexico and west Texas, scoring more than two million points each for another scoring record.
     Altogether, N6NB/R activated 52 grid squares from coast to coast between January, 2003 and January, 2005.
    As the rover building-boom continued, the N6NB rover fleet grew to as many as eleven (11) different 10-band rover stations, most of them housed in large toolboxes that could be mounted on a rotor atop a roof rack on any SUV.  There is a separate page on this website describing the toolbox stations.  As the rover capability grew, the Southern California Contest Club began competing in the ARRL club aggregate competition and winning club gavels--something that no west coast club had ever done before.

     The January, 2005 VHF contest was a memorable event for many participants.  The northern and eastern states experienced near-blizzard conditions, with impossibly high snow-induced noise levels.  Some rovers courageously went afield in this horrible weather, but the scores of both fixed stations and rovers were understandably lower than usual.  We roved in New Mexico and West Texas and experienced surprisingly good weather for January--no snow, only moderate winds, and clear skies much of the time.  We visited a total of 22 grid squares and traveled 1,000 miles during the contest, amassing three scores over two million points--the first ever to exceed two megapoints in VHF SS.  Here's the breakdown:

Call                Qs    Q pts   Mult    Score

N6NB/R (+W6XD)    2040    9098    242   2,201,716
N6ZZ/R (+N2IC)    1957    8943    242   2,164,206
N6MU/R (+K2MM)    1937    8900    242   2,153,800

     These scores are directly attributable to the talents of the seasoned contest operators who joined us for this venture.  It quickly became clear why they're so successful in HF contests.

     One of the highlights was spanning some seemingly impossible paths, working over high hills on 10 Ghz.  Another was working W5LCC 27 times from seven grid squares, including Qs on 1296 from five grid squares.  And we worked K5RHR 15 times (thanks for making Lubbock and Albuquerque so workable, guys).

The rover expeditions kept growing in the 2000s.  In January, 2007, four stations traveled together from Orange County to Arbuckle, Calif. for VHF SS.  The group included K6MI and N6NB in the Ford F150 camper (at left), W6YLZ in the Lexus RX-330, W6TE and WA6LUT in the Subaru Baja, and KG6TOA and KI6AAY in the Ford E350 van, all shown here at the Madera convergence.  By then N6NB had added a new flagship station in the F150 that housed kilowatt amplifiers on six and two meters capable of full power while mobile in motion.  That station also included amplifiers capable of about 20 watts output on all the microwave bands.  The  homemade camper attracted a lot of attention, some of it unwanted.  It was eventually replaced with a less conspicuous (but less roomy) commercial truck camper with a heavy roof rack.
 

Miguel Ramirez, W6YLZ

Bryan Sorensen, KI6AAY (in the passenger seat), and Rob Hughes, KG6TOA

John Morrice, K6MI

Dave Smith, W6TE, with Larry Bettencourt, WA6LUT, operating in back

With a rule change imminent, we made an effort to achieve good scores in what turned out to be the last contest under the 1995-2007 rule structure.  Once again we followed our California route to the Arbuckle convergence northwest of Sacramento with three stations, activating 15 grid squares and posting scores of over 600,000 points for a new record in the September contest.  This photo shows the group at the northwestern end of the rove in CM89.  The operators included K6MI and W6TE in the Lexus and  KK6KK and KG6TOA in the van, with N6MU joining N6NB in the F150.

These rover expeditions have continued to grow as the rules evolved.  By January, 2009, we had eight complete 10-band stations available--and all eight were on the road.  W6TE (with WA6LUT part of the way) and W6YLZ were in the unlimited category in which it's both acceptable and practical to "grid circle."  In the classic rover category, grid circling is not a good strategy (with only a limited number of QSOs allowed with any other rover, the savvy way to use those Qs is for multipliers--not to work anyone more than once in a given grid square).  We had four rovers in the classic category:  AF6O/R, KK6KK/R (with KG6TOA), N6NB/R and W6XD/R (who was the top-scoring rover overall a year earlier in the 2008 VHF SS).  This time we also had a talented newcomer in the limited rover category:  Carrie Tai, now W6TAI.  So who was the eighth rover?  Well, N6TEB bought a new Ford diesel truck shortly before the contest and borrowed one of the 10-band "toolbox" stations because he hadn't yet had time to install his own excellent station in his new truck.  Dave met us at the Bissell (Mojave) convergence and worked us on 10 bands there, but he did not travel on from there with us.

     By Summer, 2009, we had enough hardware to outfit eleven (yes, 11) vehicles as 10-band rover stations, and four other members of our group (KE6HPZ, N6TEB, N6VI and W6TE) had built their own 10-band rovers.  Several of us who have been longtime members of the Southern California Contest Club decided to enter the newly announced club competition in the August UHF Contest.  We also submitted a club entry under the SCCC banner in several more contests in 2009 and 2010.  The SCCC group had the highest club aggregate scores in the country in August and September, 2009, and in January, June, August and September, 2010.  No west coast club had ever had the top overall score in the club competition in any VHF contest until the SCCC won these six club gavels.
     In addition to hardware, the SCCC has been blessed with talented operators and leaders.  Art Goddard, W6XD, has become the group's field commander, functioning as a combination quarterback and cat-herder.  Marty Woll, N6VI, has brought an accountant's expertise to the planning process, generating spreadsheets and documentation that have been a key contributor to SCCC's success.
     To compete as a club, the SCCC rovers had to devise new routes that kept us entirely within the official boundaries of the club, as required by the rules of the club competition.  Each participating club must designate a center point.  Only members who live within 175 miles of that point can compete for the club, and rovers may not count any score achieved while operating outside this 175-mile radius.  There are elaborate rules governing participation by non-members along with members.  In general, a rover score may be counted by a club if there are two operators and one is a resident club member.

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A noteworthy thing about the August, 2010 UHF contest was WB2WIK's national first place score in the single operator low power category.  Steve guest-operated N6NB's home station in DM13.  The 70-foot tower, with antennas for all bands from 14 MHz to 10 GHz, is shown above.  It was the first time since the late 1970s that any west coast fixed station had been #1 nationally in the UHF contest.  (N6NB, operating fixed atop Mt. Pinos, won the first two UHF contests in 1978 and 1979).  August 2010 was also a very successful contest for the SCCC rovers.  N6NB and W6TAI both broke the rover scoring record and W6YLZ finished #1 nationally in the limited rover category.

This station setup was used by N6NB in the single operator (QRP) portable category in September, 2010.  Because the antennas had to be installed on site to avoid damage from low trees along the 10-mile dirt road up the mountaintop, it made sense to use slightly larger antennas than in a typical rover installation where the truck is driven with the antennas in place.  If you look beyond the mountain, you can see an inversion layer forming.  It resulted in good tropo conditions up the San Joaquin Valley late in the contest, allowing N6NB to work some distant multipliers with 10 watts that had been unworkable earlier in the weekend.

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The January, 2011, VHF Sweepstakes was the first rove for several newcomers to the SCCC group.  This photo shows K6AH and his wife Sally (both newcomers), W6YLZ (a veteran of many roves), N6UWW (on her second rove), KG6OKB (on his first rove), and N6HD (right) with his friend Evelyn (on their second rove).  The photo was taken by WB6BFG (on his third rove).  Others roving with the group at least part of the weekend were longtime rovers K9JK (+N6MU), KE6HPZ, N6HC, and N6TEB (+K6WCI).  Of this group, only three rovers were together all weekend.  WB6BFG and N6UWW began the contest in Del Mar Heights and quickly handed out the DM12 multiplier on 10 bands before joining the group.  This time most of the group gathered at Signal Peak (DM13) at the start of the contest to work a contingent from the San Diego Microwave Group who were atop Mt. Soledad (DM12).  The San Diego group included KB5MU, KD0IF, N6IZW, W5NYV and W6OYJ.  Thanks to them for so many microwave Qs!  When the results were compiled and published in QST, K9JK and N6MU had the top rover score in the country, followed closely by K6AH.  KE6HPZ won the unlimited rover category and W6YLZ was again #1 in the limited rover category.    N6NB broke the January single op portable scoring record.

A highlight of January, 2011 was a DXpedition to CM94 by W6TAI/R, who provided 10 rare band-multipliers to the rovers as well as N6NB (in the single operator portable category).  This photo shows the 152-mile path from Signal Peak in DM13 to Carrie's site on a bluff near Gaviota State Beach.  As the Hepburn forecast had predicted, there was just enough over-water tropo to make this possible.

In June, 2011, the SCCC rovers visited 10 grid squares within club territory, with K6MI the apparent national winner of the rover category, just ahead of K6AH.  A highlight was the debut of Art Goddard's daughter Amy, W6XDX, as a full weekend rover in a father-daughter team.  K6GEP joined the group for part of the weekend, as did N6HC and N6NC.  Meanwhile, W6TAI went on a solo rove to 10 grid squares on her own, covering 873 miles and providing many multipliers to the rover team and others, including  the N6VI multioperator group on Frazier Mountain and N6NB, again in the single operator QRP portable category.  The map immediately below shows the microwave paths over which N6NB worked the rover group or W6TAI in an effort that led to a third national record score in the QRP portable category.

This photo, taken just before the start of the January, 2012, VHF Sweepstakes, shows eight rovers near Port Arthur, TX in EL39.  This group included 10 members of the Nacogdoches (TX) Amateur Radio Club and five visitors.

For some years we have been watching the VHF contest successes of the Nacogdoches Amateur Radio Club.  Despite being in a town of only 33,000 people nowhere near any big city, this club has been turning in impressive scores year after year.

After talking with Army Curtis, AE5P, and Marshall Williams, K5QE, at the 2011 Central States VHF Conference in Dallas, several of us accepted their invitation to join them for a VHF contest in East Texas.  Six Californians traveled there.  Five of us roved with Nacogdoches club members, using their call signs and helping out wherever we could.  The sixth visitor joined the team at K5QE's well-equipped multioperator station.

We were amazed by what we saw.  This small club had more than 20 members active in VHF SS, including about 15 who roved and five who operated at K5QE.  Several others got on at home.  We met some wonderfully dedicated and conscientious people during our week in Nacogdoches.  We hope to stay in touch with them for the rest of our days in amateur radio. We are very grateful for their hospitality.

It was a banner year for the Nacogdoches club, the rovers and K5QE.  The club, moving up from the local club category to "Division I-A," will have one of the very highest club scores in the country.  At least seven Nacogdoches members' calls will appear high in the national rover standings, and K5QE will have one of the top multioperator scores anywhere. 

Even the weather was perfect--with temperatures in the 70s, no rain, and evenings warm enough for outdoor station-building.  It was a memorable experience.